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THE   FATHER  OF   NAVIGATION   ON   THE   MISSOURI   RIVER.- P    31. 


A  HISTORY 


OF   THF, 


MISSOURI   RIVER 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  RIVER  BY  THE  JESUIT  EXPLORERS;  INDIAN 

TRIBES  ALONG  THE  RIVER;  EARLY  NAVIGATION  AND 

CRAFT  USED;  THE  RISE  AND  FALL 

OF   STEAMBOATING. 


BY 

PHIL  E.  CHAPPELL 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  RIVER  BY  THE  JESUIT  EXPLOR, 
ERS— INDIAN  TRIBES  ALONG  THE  RIVER, 


There  is  but  little  doubt  that  had  the  Missouri  river  been  dis- 
covered before  the  Mississippi  the  name  of  the  latter  would  have 
applied  to  both  streams,  and  the  Missouri  would  have  been  con- 
sidered the  main  stream  and  the  upper  Mississippi  the  tributary. 
From  the  head  of  the  Missouri,  west  of  Yellowstone  Park,  to  its 
mouth,  as  it  meanders,  is  a  distance  of  2,546  miles;  and  to  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico  the  Missouri-Mississippi  has  a  length  of  4,220  miles. 
The  Missouri  is  longer  than  the  entire  Mississippi,  and  more  than 
twice  as  long  as  that  part  of  the  latter  stream  above  their  confluence. 
It  drains  a  watershed  of  580,000  square  miles,  and  its  mean  total 
annual  discharge  is  estimated  to  be  twenty  cubic  miles,  or  at  a  mean- 
rate  of  94,000  cubic  feet  per  second,  which  is  more  than  twice  the 
quantity  of  water  discharged  by  the  Upper  Mississippi.  It  is  by 
far  the  boldest,  the  most  rapid  and  the  most  turbulent  of  the  two 
streams,  and  its  muddy  water  gives  color  to  the  Lower  Mississippi 
river  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  By  every  rule  of  nomenclature,  the 
Missouri,  being  the  main  stream  and  the  Upper  Mississippi  the  trib- 
utary, the  name  of  the  former  should  have  been  given  precedence, 
and  the  great  river — the  longest  in  the  world — should  have  been 
called  "Missouri"  from  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico. 


2  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

The  earliest  Spanish  explorers  evidently  considered  the  Lower 
Mississippi  but  a  continuation  of  the  Missouri,  for  when  Coronado 
came  into  Kansas,  in  1541,  on  his  expedition  from  Mexico,  he  was 
told  of  the  Missouri  by  the  Indians.  He  says :  "The  great  river 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  (Esperita  Santo),  which  De  Soto  discovered  in 
the  country  of  Florida,  flows  through  this  country.  The  sources 
were  not  visited  by  us,  because,  according  to  what  the  Indians  say, 
it  comes  from  a  distant  country  in  the  mountains,  from  that  part 
that  sheds  its  waters  onto  the  plains  and  comes  out  where  De  Soto 
navigated  it.  This  is  more  than  300  leagues  from  where  it  enters 
the  sea." 

MARQUETTE  AND  JOLIET— 1673.* 

The  Missouri  river  was  the  same  ugly,  muddy,  tortuous,  rapid 
stream  when  first  seen  by  the  early  French  explorers  as  it  is  today. 
When,  in  1673,  the  Jesuit  explorers,  Marquette  and  Joliet — the  first 
white  men  to  come  down  the  Mississippi — arrived  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Missouri,  they  were  astonished  to  see,  flowing  in  from  the  west, 
a  torrent  of  yellow,  muddy  water  which  rushed  furiously  athwart 
the  clear  blue  current  of  the  Mississippi,  boiling  and  sweeping  in  its 
course  logs,  branches  and  uprooted  trees.  Marquette,  in  his  jour- 
nal, says :  "I  have  seen  nothing  more  frightful.  A  mass  of  large 
trees  enter  with  branches — real  floating  islands.  They  come  rush- 
ing from  the  mouth  of  the  Pek-i-tan-oni,  (the  Indian  name  for  Mis- 


•It  was  more  than  a  century  after  the  discovery  of  the  Mississippi  river 
by  the  Spaniards  before  the  French  made  any  effort  to  explore  it.  In  1634 
Nicolet,  a  courier-de-bois.  left  Quebec,  and,  ascending  the  St.  Lawrence  and 
Ottawa  rivers,  passed  through  the  Straits  of  Mackinaw.  Then  coasting  along 
Lake  Michigan  he  reached  Green  Bay.  From  the  Indians  in  that  vicinity  he 
heard  of  a  great  river  toward  the  west,  which  flowed  toward  the  south. 
Other  explorers  and  Jesuit  missionaries  followed.  Fathers  Raymboult, 
and  Jogues,  in  1641,  and  Radismi  ]<>r>4.  All  of  these  adventurers  brought 
back  to  Quebec  wonderful  accounts  of  a  great  river  flowing  over  west  of 
Lakes  Michigan  and  Superior,  but,  into  what  sea  it  flowed  was  unknown  to 
the  Indians. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  3 

souri,  meaning,  ('Muddy  Water,')  so  impetuously  that  we  could 
not  without  great  danger  expose  ourselves  to  pass  across.  The 
Pek-i-tan-oni  is  a  considerable  stream,  which,  coming  from  the 
northwest,  enters  the  Mississippi/' 

Marquette  was  informed  by  the  Indians  that  "by  ascending 
this  river  for  five  or  six  days,  one  reaches  a  fine  prairie,  twenty 
or  thirty  leagues  long.  This  must  be  crossed  in  a  northwesterly 
direction,  and  it  terminates  at  another  small  river  on  which  one  miy 
embark.  This  second  river  flows  toward  the  southwest  for  ten  or 
fifteen  leagues,  after  which  it  enters  a  lake,  which  flows  toward  the 
west,  when  it  falls  into  the  sea.  I  have  hardly  any  doubt  it  is  the 
Vermillion  Sea." 

This  was  an  age  of  adventure  and  exploration  among  the 
people  of  the  New  World,  and  in  1672  Comte  de  Frontinac,  the 
Governor  of  New  France,  determined  to  send  an  expedition  to  dis- 
cover the  "Great  River,"  in  which  great  interest  had  now  become 
awakened.  Louis  Joliet,  a  man  of  education,  excellent  judgment 
and  tried  courage,  was  selected  to  undertake  this  hazardous  enter- 
prise. He  was  besides  a  rover,  and  had  previously  visited  the  Lake 
Superior  region  and  spent  several  years  in  the  Far  West. 

Joliet  set  out  from  Quebec  in  August,  1672,  and  in  December 
arrived  at  Mackinaw,  where  he  spent  the  winter  in  preparing  for  his 
expedition.  During  his  stay  there,  he  met  a  young  Jesuit  mission- 
ary— Father  Marquette — a  religious  zealot,  who  had  devoted  his 
life  to  the  spiritual  welfare  of  the  Indians.  The  missionary,  who 
was  somewhat  of  an  adventurer  himself,  was  easily  persuaded  to 
join  Joliet,  and  on  May  I7th,  1673,  having  laid  in  a  supply  of  corn 
and  dried  buffalo  meat,  they  set  out  with  five  Indians  in  two  canoes 


4  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

on  their  perilous  voyage.  Having  reached  Green  Bay,  they  as- 
cended the  Fox  river  to  its  head,  where  they  made  a  portage  of  two 
and  a  half  miles  to  the  head-waters  of  the  Wisconsin  river.  They 
floated  down  the  last  named  river  until  on  the  i/th  of  June,  the 
little  fleet  floated  out  upon  the  placid  waters  of  the  Mississippi. 

Without  meeting  with  any  adventure  worthy  of  notice,  they 
arrived  at  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri  about  the  first  of  July,  1673. 
It  was  during  the  June  rise,  and  the  description  which  Marquette 
gives  of  the  turbulence  of  that  stream,  the  color  of  its  waters,  and 
the  great  quantity  of  drift-wood  and  logs,  seen  floating  on  its  sur- 
face, is  a  correct  one,  and  is  familiar  to  every  one  acquainted  with 
the  Missouri  when  on  its  annual  rampage. 

After  paddling  their  canoes  down  as  far  as  the  Arkansas,  the 
voyageurs  became  convinced  that  the  Mississippi  emptied  into  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  not  into  either  the  Atlantic  Ocean  or  the  Gulf 
of  California,  as  had  been  surmised.  They  also  learned  from  the 
natives  that  they  were  approaching  a  country  where  they  were  likely 
to  encounter  the  Spaniards.  They,  therefore,  very  prudently,  turn- 
ed the  bows  of  their  canoes  up  stream  and  after  a  tedious  voyage 
arrived  at  Lake  Michigan  by  way  of  the  Illinois  river.  Here  the 
two  comrades  parted  company,  Marquette  to  remain  with  a  tribe  of 
Indians,  then  seated  where  the  city  of  Chicago  is  now  located,  and 
Joliet  to  return  to  Quebec  by  the  route  he  had  come.  In  descend- 
ing the  St.  Lawrence  river,  Joliet's  canoe  was  upset,  and  all  of  his 
papers,  including  his  maps  and  journal,  were  lost.  Fortunately, 
Marquette's  papers  were  preserved,  and  it  is  from  his  journal — a 
priceless  manuscript, — that  the  above  extracts,  referring  to  the  Mis- 
souri river,  have  been  obtained. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  5 

It  seems  that  Marquette  had  contemplated  a  voyage  down  the 
Mississippi  for  several  years  before  he  met  Joiiet,  for  in  a  letter 
written  in  1670  to  Father  Francis  Le  Mercier,  Superior  of  the 
Huron  Mission,  after  referring  to  the  Mississippi  river,  then  only 
known  by  reports  from  the  Indians,  and  to  the  different  Illinois 
tribes,  he  says  of  the  Missouri : 

"Six  or  seven  days'  journey  below  the  Illinois  is  another  river 
on  which  are  prodigious  natives,  who  use  the  wooden  canoe.  Of 
these  I  cannot  write  now,  but  will  write  next  year." 

Marquette,  having  contracted}  a  malarial  fever  in  the  south, 
died  shortly  after  his  return,  and  his  remains,  over  which  a  hand- 
some monument  has  been  erected,  repose  at  St.  Ignace,  near  Macki- 
naw, Mich. 

LA  SALLE'S  EXPEDITION— 1682. 

The  second  expedition  down  the  Mississippi  was  conducted  by 
Robert  Cavalier  de  La  Salle  in  1682.  For  several  years  La  Salle, 
who  had  been  an  enterprising  trader  at  Quebec,  Canada,  had  con- 
templated completing  the  expedition  of  Marquette  and  Joiiet  by  fol- 
lowing the  Mississippi  to  its  entrance  into  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and 
planting  there  the  "Lillies  of  France."  Following  the  usual  course 
of  travel,  through  the  Straits  of  Mackinaw,  and  down  the  eastern 
shore  of  Lake  Michigan,  he  arrived  about  the  first  of  January,  1682, 
at  the  mouth  of  a  river  called  by  the  Indians  Checagou  (Chicago). 
Dragging  their  canoes  over  the  frozen  river  they  made  the  portage 
to  the  head  of  the  Illinois,  down  which  they  descended  until  the 
6th  of  February  found  them  at  the  mouth  of  that  river,  where  they 
were  detained  for  several  days  by  ice  in  the  river. 


6  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

La  Salle's  company  consisted  of  31  Indians  and  23  French- 
Canadians,  and  among  the  latter  were  several  priests,  some  of  whom 
have  left  accounts  of  this  famous  expedition. 

FATHER  ZENOBIUS  MEMBRE'S  ACCOUNT— 1683. 

This  account  was  published  in  "Discoveries  in  the  Mississippi 
Valley,"  (Le  Clercq),  1683.  He  says : 

"The  floating  ice  kept  us  at  this  place  (mouth  of  the  Illinois 
river)  till  the  I3th  of  February,  (1682),  when  we  set  out  and  six 
leagues  lower  down,  found  the  Osage  river  coming  in  from  the  west. 
It  is  full  as  large  as  the  river  Colbert,  (Mississippi)  into  which  it 
flows,  troubling  it  so  that. from  the  mouth  of  the  Osage  the  water 
is  hardly  drinkable.  The  Indians  assure  us  that  this  river  is  form- 
ed by  many  others,  and  that  they  ascended  it  for  ten  or  twelve  days 
to  a  mountain,  where  it  rises.  That  on  the  river  are  a  great  num- 
ber of  villages  of  many  different  nations,  arible  and  prairie  lands, 
and  an  abundance  of  cattle  (buffalo)  and  beaver.  Although  this 
river  is  very  large,  the  Colbert  does  not  seem  to  be  augmented  by 
it,  but  it  pours  in  so  much  mud  that  from  its  mouth  the  water  of  the 
united  rivers  is  never  clear  thereafter  to  the  Gulf,  although  seven 
other  rivers  of  clear  water  are  discharged  into  it." 

Speaking  in  another  place  of  the  hostilities  between  the  Iro- 
quois  and  the  Illinois  Indians,  Membre  says:  "There  have  been 
several  engagements,  with  equal  losses  on  both  sides,  and  at 
last  the  greater  part  of  the  seventeen  villages  have  retired  beyond 
the  river  Colbert  among  the  Osages,  where  a  part  of  the  Iroquois 
pursued  them." 

NOTE  i. — Father  Membre  calls  the  Missouri  river  the  Osage, 
doubtless  from  the  tribe  of  Indians  whose  villages  were  then  lo- 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  7 

cated  on  that  stream  near  its  confluence  with  the  Missouri.  So 
imperfect  was  the  knowledge  of  the  country  at  that  time,  as  it  had 
never  been  explored,  and  so  little  was  known  of  the  rivers  of  the 
West,  even  by  the  Indians,  that  there  was  some  doubt  in  the 
minds  of  the  Frenchmen  whether  the  Missouri  or  the  Osage  was 
the  principal  stream. 

NOTE  2. — As  will  be  hereafter  seen,  Father  Douay  also  refers 
to  this  war  between  the  Iroquois  and  the  tribes  of  the  West.  Did 
the  Illinois  Indians  become  absorbed  by  the  Osages  and  lose  their 
identity,  or  did  they  return  east  of  the  Mississippi?  The  facts  will 
never  be  known;  but  that  the  Iroquois  pursued  these  tribes  wrest 
of  the  Mississippi  is  attested  by  the  early  French  writers  of  that 
period.  The  subject  will  again  be  referred  to. 

NOTE  3. — It  is  difficult  to  understand  how  the  Indians  could 
have  been  so  mistaken  in  the  length  of  the  Missouri  river  as  to 
state  that  it  was  only  ten  or  twelve  days'  journey  to  the  moun- 
tains where  it  had  its  rise.  And  it  is  equally  difficult  to  compre- 
hend how  anyone  of  intelligence,  on  viewing  the  river,  could  have 
been  induced  to  believe  that  a  stream  of  that  size  was  only  150 
to  200  miles  long.  As  will  be  seen,  not  only  in  Father  Mem- 
bre's  report,  but  in  others,  gross  misrepresentations  were  made 
by  the  Indians  of  the  country  lying  along  the  Missouri  river. 
Whether  these  stories  were  told  the  Frenchmen  for  the  purpose  of 
deceiving  them;  through  ignorance  of  the  Indians  of  the  facts; 
or  whether  they  were  misunderstood  from  the  want  of  a  compe- 
tent interpreter;  it  is  impossible  to  determine. 

HENRI  TONTY— 1683. 

Henri  Tonty,  who  also  accompanied  La  Salle  on  his  famous 
expedition,  in  a  book  entitled,  "Enterprise  of  M.  de  La  Salle  from 
1673  to  J683,"  published  at  Quebec  in  November,  1684,  gives  the 
following  account  of  the  Missouri  river : 

"The  Indians  having  finished  three  canoes,  we  descended  the 
river  (they  were  then  at  the  mouth  of  the  Illinois),  and  found  at  six 


8  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

leagues,*  on  the  right,  a  river  which  falls  into  the  River  Colbert, 
coming  from  the  west  and  appearing  as  large  and  important  as  the 
great  river.  According  to  the  reports  of  the  sanvages  it  is  called 
E-mis-sou-ri-tes.  It  is  abundantly  settled  with  people.  There  are 
also  on  this  river  villages  of  sauvages  which  make  use  of  horses  to 
go  to  war  and  to  carry  the  meat  of  the  buffalo,  which  they  kill." 

In  "Henri  Tonty's  Memoirs,"  published  in  Paris  in  1693,  he 
makes  the  following  reference  to  the  Osage  Indians  in  his  return 
trip  up  the  Mississippi  river  from  the  ill-fated  expedition  of  La 
Salle.  He  says:  "We  arrived  on  the  I7th  of  October,  1683,  at  an 
Illinois  village  at  the  mouth  of  their  river,  (the  Illinois  river).  They 
had  just  come  from  fighting  the  Osages  and  had  lost  thirteen  men, 
but  they  brought  back  130  prisoners." 

In  Tonty's  petition  to  the  King  of  France,  for  recognition  for 
his  services,  presented  in  1693,  he  says:  "The  river  of  the  Mis- 
sou-ri-tes  comes  from  the  west,  and  after  traversing  300  leagues, 
arrives  at  a  lake,  which  I  believe  is  that  of  the  Apaches.  Villages 
of  the  Mis-rou-ri-tes,  Agovoes  (lowas)  and  Osages  are  near  one 
another,  and  situated  on  the  prairies,  150  leagues  from  the  tnouth 
of  the  E-mis-sou-ri-tes  river." 

Again  he  says  of  his  downward  voyage :  "We  descended  the 
river  (Illinois)  and  six  leagues  below,  on  the  right,  came  to  a  great 
river  which  comes  from  the  west.  It  is  said  there  are  numerous 
nations  on  this  river.  We  slept  at  the  mouth  and  the  next  day 
went  to  the  village  of  the  Tamarou,  six  leagues  off  to  the  left." 

NOTE  I. — Henri  Tonty  was  the  trusted  friend  and  lieutenant 
of  La  Salle,  and  in  point  of  energy,  intelligence  and  personal  cour- 
age was  not  behind  his  superior  officer.  In  his  youth  he  had  lost 

•A  French  league  Is  two  and  three-fourths  miles. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  9 

an  arm  in  battle,  and  had  supplied  the  missing  member  with  one 
of  iron.  This  peculiarity  was  observed  by  the  Indians,  by  whom 
he  was  universally  known  as  the  "Iron  Hand."  He  returned  to 
the  Illinois  country  in  1683,  and  after  La  Salle's  unfortunate  death 
during  his  second  expedition  in  1687,  he  again  went  down  the 
Mississippi  for  the  purpose  of  rescuing  the  remnant  of  the  ill- 
fated  colony.  Of  all  the  members  of  La  Salle's  famous  expedition 
Tonty  was  the  bravest,  the  most  loyal  and  the  most  trustworthy. 

NOTE  2. — Horses  were  in  general  use  among  the  Indian  tribes 
above  the  mouth  of  the  Kaw,  at  an  early  day.  The  stock  had 
been  procured  from  the  Spaniards  in  New  Mexico. 

NOTE  3. — The  tribe  of  Indians  referred  to  as  the  "Tamarou" 
are  extinct.  As  their  village  was  on  the  east  side  of  the  Mississippi 
river  they  were  probably  one  of  the  numerous  small  tribes  of  the 
Illinois  Indians,  who  were  exterminated  by  the  Iroquois. 

NOTE  4. — The  lake  spoken  of  as  that  of  the  "Apache"  prob- 
ably referred  to  the  Great  Salt  Lake,  as  there  was  no  other  in 
that  direction.  The  reference  is  another  illustration  of  the  very 
imperfect  knowledge  of  the  country  and  its  water  courses  pos- 
sessed by  the  Indians.  They  had.  heard,  no  doubt,  of  a  great  lake 
toward  the  west,  and  supposed  that  the  river  had  some  connec- 
tion with  it. 

NICHOLAS  LA  SALLE— 1685. 

In  the  narration  of  Nicholas  La  Salle,  entitled,  "The  Voyage 
of  Robert  R.  Cavalier  La  Salle  to  the  Mouth  of  the  Mississippi/' 
written  in  1685,  he  says:  "The  first  day  we  camped  six  leagues 
on  the  right,  (from  the  Illinois  river),  near  the  mouth  of  a  river 
which  falls  on  the  Mississippi.  It  is  called  the  river  of  the  Missou- 
ries.  This  river  comes  from  the  northwest  and  is  thickly  settled, 
judging  from  what  the  savages  say.  The  Panes  are  on  this  river 
very  far  from  its  mouth." 

NOTE — The  "Panes,"  "Panas,"  or  Aparias  as  they  were  called 
when  first  known  to  the  French,  were  afterward  known  as  the 
"Pawnees."  They  may  have  been  the  same  tribe  met  by  De  Soto 
in  Southeast  Missouri  in  1541,  called  by  him  the  "Quipanas."  A 


10  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

band  of  the  same  tribe  was  met  by  Du  Tisne  in  1719,  called  by  him 
the  "Panas."  They  were  living  on  the  Platte  in  1724,  when  visited 
by  Bourgmont,  as  will  be  seen  hereafter,  although  he  calls  them 
the  "Paducas."  The  two  names,  by  most  historians,  are  con- 
sidered synonymous,  although  it  is  contended  by  some  that  the 
Paducas  were  a  different  tribe,  and  that  they  afterward  went 
South  and  are  now  known  as  the  "Comanches,"  a  tribe  living  in 
the  Indian  Territory. 

The  "Panes,"  or  "Pawnees,"  were  at  one  time  a  numerous 
Western  tribe,  and  roved  all  over  the  country  from  Red  River, 
Texas,  to  the  Platte.  They  were  the  same  Indians  encountered 
by  Lieutenant  Pike  in  Republic  County,  Kas.,  in  Sept.,  1806.  In  a 
report  to  the  Secretary  of  War,  made  in  1829,  their  number  was 
estimated  at  12,000,  and  it  was  stated  that  there  were  four  bands, 
the  Pawnee  Republics,  the  Pawnee  Loups,  the  Grand  Pawnees  and 
the  Pawnee  Piques.  All  were  then  located  on  the  Platte,  and  they 
claimed  the  country  as  far  west  as  the  Cheyennes.  In  1836  their 
number  was  estimated,  officially,  by  the  government,  at  12,500,  but 
in  a  subsequent  report,  made  to  the  Secretary  of  War  in  1850, 
it  was  stated  they  were  still  on  the  Platte,  but  that  their  number 
had  been  reduced  to  6,244. 

This  remarkable  reduction  was  caused  by  that  terrible  scourge 
of  the  American  Indian — the  smallpox.  The  mortality  was  not 
confined  to  the  Pawnees  alone,  but  extended  to  all  other  tribes  on 
the  Missouri  river,  one-half  of  whom,  it  is  said,  died  during  the 
winter  of  1837-1838.*  The  manner  in  which  this  terrible  contagion 
was  communicated  to  the  Western  tribes,  hereafter  described,  seems 


•Father  De  Smet,  In  his  "Travels  among  the  Rocky  Mountain  Indians," 
in  1840  refers  to  this  terrible  epidemic  among  the  Minatarees,  Poncas,  Paw- 
nees, Aricaras,  Blackfeet,  Flatheads,  Crows,  Grosventrees,  Cheyennes,  Man- 
dans  and  other  tribes.  Of  the  Mandans  he  says:  "This  once  numerous  na- 
tion is  now  reduced  to  a  few  families,  the  only  survivors  of  the  small- 
pox scourge  of  1837."  Several  of  these  tribes  have  become  extinct. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  11 

providential,  and  one  can  almost  see  in  it  the  hand  of  God ;  remov- 
ing from  the  beautiful  plains  of  Kansas  and  Nebraska  an  inferior 
race  that  they  might  be  peopled  by  one  superior. 

In  1855  the  Pawnees  ceded  their  lands  in  Nebraska  to  the 
government,  and  in  the  '6os  were  removed,  with  other  tribes,  to 
the  Indian  Territory.  The  remnant  of  the  tribe,  now  numbering 
less  than  600,  are  on  a  reservation  near  Ponca  Agency.  They 
were  the  most  dangerous  of  all  the  tribes  that  infested  the  Western 
plains  from  1840  to  1860. 

JOUTEL'S  ACCOUNT— 1687. 

Henry  Joutel  was  a  young  nephew  of  La  Salle,  and  accom- 
panied his  uncle  on  his  second  expedition  through  Southern  Louisi- 
ana. He  was  with  him  when  he  was  cruelly  murdered  by  one  of 
his  own  men,  and  was  one  of  the  half-dozen  survivors  of  the  ill- 
fated  expedition.  After  La  Salle's  death,  he  made  his  way  up  the 
Mississippi  river  to  old  Ft.  St.  Louis,  on  the  Illinois  river,  and 
thence  to  Quebec  and  France. 

The  following  is  a  reference  to  the  Missouri  river.  He  says : 
"We  stopped  on  the  3Oth  and  3ist  of  August,  (1687),  and  on  the 
ist  of  September  passed  by  the  mouth  of  a  stream  called  the  Mis- 
souri, whose  water  is  always  thick  with  mud  and  to  which  our 
Indians  did  not  forget  to  offer  sacrifice." 

NOTE — At  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri  several  years  before,  a 
party  of  Missourites,  pursued  by  a  party  of  Mataigames  had  been 
drowned,  and  afterwards  these  Indians,  in  passing,  threw  pres- 
ents into  the  water  in  order  to  appease  the  Maniteau,  whom  they 
suppose'  to,  dwell  there. 

FATHER  ANASTASIUS  DOUAY— 1687. 
Among  the  priests  in  La  Salles'  party  was  Father  Douay,  a 


12  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

most  devout  missionary,  who,  in  his  "Voyage  of  La  Salle  Through 
the  Illinois  Country,"  published  in  1687,  (after  La  Salle's  death), 
says  of  the  Missouri  river : 

"About  six  leagues  below  this,  (the  mouth  of  the  Illinois), 
there  is  on  the  northwest,  the  famous  river  of  the  Mis-sou-ri-tes,  or 
Osages,  at  least  as  large  as  the  River  Colbert,  into  which  it  empties. 
It  is  formed  by  a  number  of  other  known  rivers,  everywhere  navi- 
gable and  inhabited  by  many  populous  tribes,  including  the  Osages, 
who  have  17  villages  on  a  river  of  their  name,  which  empties  into 
that  of  the  Missourites,  to  which  the  maps  have  also  given  the  name 
of  the  Osages.  The  Arkansas  Indians  were  formerly  stationed  on 
the  upper  part  of  one  of  these  rivers,  but  the  Iroquois  drove  them 
out,  by  cruel  wars,  some  years  ago,  so  they  say.  Since  then  the 
Osages  have  taken  possession  of  the  country  and  established  their 
villages  on  the  river  which  bears  their  name." 

NOTE — The  Iroquois  were  a  confederation  of  Indians  occupy- 
ing the  western  part  of  the  state  of  New  York.  They  were  called 
the  "Five  Tribes"  until  they  were  joined  by  the  Tuscaroras  (who 
were  driven  out  of  North  Carolina  in  1712),  after  which  they 
were  known  as  the  "Six  Tribes."  They  were  the  most  warlike 
of  all  the  northern  Indians,  and  were  allies  of  the  English,  in  their 
contest  with  the  French  for  supremacy  in  the  New  World.  They 
were  continually  at  war  with  the  Algonquin  tribes,  who  were  al- 
lies of  the  French  (in  Canada),  and  being  well  supplied  with  fire- 
arms, finally  drove  many  of  these  tribes,  including  the  Hurons, 
Wyandottes,  Sacs  and  Foxes  and  others,  through  the  Straits  of 
Mackinaw  to  the  western  coast  of  Lake  Michigan,  where  they  were 
living  when  Marquette  and  Joliet  passed  through  that  section  on 
their  way  down  the  Mississippi  in  1763. 

Having  driven  the  Algonquin  tribes  out  of  the  country  the 
Iroquois  turned  on  the  Illinois  -tribes,  who  then  occupied  the 
country  now  included  in  the  state  of  that  name,  and  finally  ex- 
terminated them.  With  their  thirst  for  blood  still  unsatiated,  it 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVF.R.  in 

will  be  seen  by  the  statements  of  Fathers  Douay  and  Membre  that 
they  even  crossed  the  Mississippi  river — a  fact  not  generally 
known — and  drove  the  Arkansas  Indians  from  the  Osage  river. 
They  were  a  cruel  and  blood-thirsty  tribe,  and  deserved  the  fate 
which  overtook  them,  for  they  are  now  entirely  extinct.* 

FATHER  COSME— 1699. 

John  Francis  Cosme — a  Jesuit  missionary — left  Canada  in 
1699  and  descended  the  Mississippi  river  by  way  of  Green  Bay  and 
the  Wisconsin  river.  He  has  left  the  following  account  of  the  Mis- 
souri river: 

"On  the  6th  of  December,  1699,  we  embarked  on  the  Missis- 
sippi river  and  after  making  about  600  leagues  (1,650  miles),  we 
found  the  river  of  the  Ou-mis-sou-ri-tes,  which  comes  from  the  west 
and  which  is  so  muddy  that  it  spoils  the  water  of  the  Mississippi, 
which  down  to  this  is  clear.  It  is  said  that  up  this  river  are  a  great 
number  of  Indians." 

In  another  place  he  mentions  meeting  with  the  Arkansas! ! 
Indians.  "We  told  them,"  he  says,  "we  were  going  further  down 
the  river  among  their  neighbors  and  friends,  and  that  they  would 
see  us  often.  That  it  would  be  well  to  assemble  all  together,  so  as 
more  easily  to  resist  their  enemies.  They  agreed  to  all  of  this  and 
promised  to  try  to  make  the  Osages  join  them,  who  had  left  the 
river  of  the  Ou-mis-sou-ri-es  and  were  now  on  the  upper  waters  of 
their  own  river." 


*A  remnant  of  this  tribe  fled  to  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  were  living 
with  the  Flatheads  at  the  beginning-  of  the  Nineteenth  century.  (See  Father 
De  Smet.) 

||The  name  "Arkansas"  was  variously  spelled  by  different  early  explorers. 
Du  Tisne  calls  it  the  "Arcansas,"  and  De  Lisle  the  "Aconsa."  It  was  an 
Indian  name,  doubtless,  with  the  final  letters — "sas" — added,  (as  in  Kansas 
and  Petete-sas)  by  the  French. 


14  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

THE  OSAGE  INDIANS. 

NOTE — As  the  foregoing  pages  contain  the  first  reference  to 
the  Osage  Indians,  preserved  in  history,  the  statements  of  the  dif- 
ferent writers  may  be  worth  a  comparison. 

Father  Membre,  writing  in  1683,  says:  "The  Illinois  tribes, 
consisting  of  the  greater  part  of  17  villages,  were  driven  across 
the  Mississippi  by  the  Iroquois  who  pursued  them  until  they  took 
.refuge  with  the  Osages."  Father  Douay  (in  1687),  says:  "The 
Osages  had  17  villages  on  the  Osage  river,"  and  adds,  "The  Ar- 
kansas Indians  who  had  formerly  occupied  that  section,  had  been 
driven  out  by  the  Iroquois  some  years  before  by  cruel  wars,  and  the 
Osages  had  taken  possession  of  the  country."  Henri  Tonty  (in 
1693)  states  that  "the  Osages  were  then  on  a  prairie  country  150 
leagues  from  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri."  This  would  be  about 
400  miles,  which  is  very  near  the  distance  by  the  river  route,  to 
where  the  prairies  on  the  Osage  set  in,  or  between  Osceola,  in 
St.  Clair  county,  and  Pappinsville,  in  Bates  county,  Missouri, 
This  is  the  locality  in  which,  as  will  hereafter  appear,  Du  Ttsne 
found  them  thirty  years  afterward  (1719)  and  where  they  re- 
mained until  they  removed  to  their  present  location  in  the  Indian 
Territory  about  1830.  Father  Cosme  (1699)  confirms  the  state- 
ment made  by  Douay,  for  he  says :  "The  Osages  have  left  the  river 
of  the  Ou-mis-sou-ries  and  are  now  high  up  on  the  waters  of  their 


own  river." 


The  map  of  De  Lisle,  published  in  1703,  which  gives  the 
location  of  all  the  Western  tribes,  lays  down  four  villages  of  the 
Osages  on  their  river.  Three  are  high  up  on  the  river,  appar- 
ently near  Osceola,  the  other  is  located  about  where  the  town  of 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  ir> 

Warsaw  stands.  There  are  none  laid  down  nearer  the  mouth  of  the 
river. 

From  this  testimony  left  us  by  the  early  explorers,  which  must 
be  reliable,  as  it  comes  from  so  many  different  sources,  it  appears 
that  the  Osage  Indians  at  some  time  previous  to  1682,  dwelt  near 
the  mouth  of  Osage  river,  either  on  the  banks  of  that  stream  or  on 
the  Missouri.  There  is  no  question  that  about  that  time  the  lower 
Missouri  tribes  were  attacked  by  the  wild  men  from  the  East — 
the  cruel  and  bloodthirsty  Iroquois — who,  as  they  were  armed  with 
British  muskets,  and  the  Missouri  tribes  had  only  the  primitive 
bow  and  arrow,  almost  annihilated  them.  By  this  cruel  onslaught, 
and  unequal  contest,  the  Osages  were  driven  higher  up  their  river, 
and  the  Missouries  to  the  Mouth  of  Grand  river,  a  distance  of  250 
miles.  The  beautiful  country  near  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri  was 
forever  abandoned  by  the  redman,  for  it  is  a  noteworthy  fact, 
that  as  far  as  we  have  any  information  there  was  never  after  this 
raid  a  wigwam  on  the  banks  o*f  the  river  below  Grand  river,  un- 
less, as  there  are  indications,  the  Missouris  stopped  temporarily 
near  Jefferson  City,  in  their  westward  flight  from  the  mouth 
of  the  river. 

In  many  respects  the  Osages  were  the  most  remarkable  of  all 
the  Western  tribes.  They  are  the  oldest  tribe  of  which  we  have  any 
data;  the  name  "Osage,"  the  origin  of  which  is  unknown,  has 
never  varied  in  its  spelling  or  been  changed ;  they  were  the  largest 
and  most  powerful  tribe  west  of  the  Mississippi,  excepting  the 
Sioux ;  they  have  remained  longer  in  the  same  locality,  having  been 
on  the  Osage  river  from  time  immemorial;  they  have  been  the 


16  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

most  peaceable  of  all  the  Western  tribes  and  have  given  the  gov- 
ernment less  trouble ;  they  are  the  tallest  and  best  proportioned  In- 
dians, physically,  in  America,  few  being  less  than  6  feet ;  and  finally, 
they  are  today  the  wealthiest  people — per  capita — in  the  world. 

Formerly  the  tribe  was  evidently  a  numerous  one,  for  Douay 
says  they  occupied  17  villages.  These  villages  were  doubtless 
scattered  all  along  the  Osage  river  and  each  contained  probably 
from  500  to  1,000  inhabitants.  When  first  visited  by  the  French 
(1719-1724)  they  were  estimated  at  12,000,  but  like  all  other 
aborgines,  contact  with  civilization  rapidly  diminished  their  num- 
ber, for  in  1820  they  had  decreased  one-half.  The  remnant  of 
this  powerful  tribe,  now  numbering  only  1,789  souls — one-half  of 
whom  are  still  blanket  Indians — are  now  on  their  reservation  in 
the  Indian  Territory. 

About  the  middle  of  the  i8th  century  the  Osages  were  di- 
vided into  three  bands:  the  Great  Osages,  the  Little  Osages,  and 
the  Black  Dog  band.  The  former  were  seated  near  Pappinsville,  in 
Bates  county,  Mo.  The  Little  Osages — whose  village  will  hereafter 
be  described — were  on  Petite-sas  Plains,  in  Saline  county,  Mo., 
and  the  Black  Dog  band  was  on  the  Verdigris  river,  in  the  Indian 
Territory.  The  "Black  Dogs"  were  so  called  from  a  celebrated 
chief — a  most  remarkable  man  in  stature,  being  nearly  7  feet  tall. 

While  the  Osages  were  a  brave  and  warlike  nation,  and  were 
frequently  at  war  with  the  Pawnees,  lowas,  Sacs  and  Foxes  and 
other  tribes,  they  always  maintained  peaceable  relations  with  the 
whites.  This  was  no  doubt  through  the  influence  of  the  French 
traders,  who  from  1785  traded  and  lived  with  them  and  thus 
acquired  a  wonderful  influence  over  them.  Only  on  one  occa- 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  17 

sion  did  they  take  up  arms  against  the  whites,  and  that  was 
during  the  Spanish  regime.  In  1794  a  war  party  made  an  attack 
on  St.  Louis,  then  a  village  defended  by  a  small  Spanish  gar- 
rison. As  the  village  was  fortified  they  dared  not  make  an  as- 
sault, but  challenged  the  Spaniards  to  come  out  and  fight  in  the 
open.  This,  of  course,  they  declined  to  do,  and  they  rode  off  with- 
out firing  a  gun. 

The  Osages,  in  their  hunting  excursions,  roamed  over  all  the 
vast  territory  from  the  Mississippi  to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  a 
good  story  is  told  by  General  Rozier,  in  his  "History  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi valley,"  of  an  occurrence  that  took  place  at  an  early  day 
near  Ste.  Genevieve,  where  General  Rozier  wras  born  and  where  he 
lived  and  died : 

"In  1797  a  wedding  party  of  young  people,  consisting  of  the 
bride  and  groom  and  a  half  dozen  other  couples,  left  their  home 
on  Big  river  to  go  to  Ste.  Genevieve  to  be  married,  there  being  no 
priest  nearer.  On  arriving  at  Terre-Beau  creek,  near  Farmington, 
they  encountered  a  roving  band  of  Osage  Indians,  who  were  out 
on  a  prairie  horse-racing.  The  party  was  soon  discovered  by  the 
Indians  and  followed.  On  being  captured  they  were  stripped  of 
all  their  clothing,  both  men  and  women,  and  turned  loose  on  the 
prairie  as  naked  as  they  came  into  the  world.  No  violence 
was  offered,  as  the  Indians  considered  it  a  good  joke;  but  they 
kept  their  clothing  and  the  young  people  were  compelled  to  return 
home  in  this  terrible  plight.  The  wedding  was  postponed  for  a 
year,  but  the  young  couple  finally  married,  and  their  descend- 
ants are  yet  living  in  St.  Francois  county." 

The  Osages  claimed  all  of  the  country  lying  south  of  the  Mis- 


18  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

souri  river  and  as  far  west  as  the  Kaw.  On  November  10,  1808, 
a  treaty  was  entered  into  by  which  they  ceded  to  the  government 
the  territory  lying  east  of  a  line  running  due  south  from  Fort 
Osage  (now  Sibley)  on  the  Missouri  river,  to  the  Arkansas  river, 
and  lying  north  of  that  stream  to  its  confluence  with  the  Mis- 
sissippi. One  provision  of  this  treaty  was  that  the  Indians  were 
to  be  removed  from  Bates  county  to  Fort  Osage.  In  1809  they 
were  so  removed,  but  they  did  not  remain  long,  for  during  the 
following  winter  they  broke  away  and  returned  to  their  former 
village  on  the  Osage.  In  1820  they  were  granted  a  tract  of  land 
ten  miles  square,  near  Pappinsville,  for  a  mission,  and  a  mission 
called  "Harmony  Mission"  was  established.  A  church  and  school 
house  were  built  and  a  large  apple  orchard  set  out.  Nothing  re- 
mains today  to  mark  the  site  of  this  old  village  except  the  trunks  of 
some  gnarled  apple  trees,  which  have  withstood  the  storms  of 
eighty  winters. 

The  Osages  are  one  of  the  very  few  tribes  which  have  no 
cause  to  complain  of  the  treatment  accorded  them  by  the  gov- 
ernment. They  have  been  well  paid  for  their  lands,  and  the  dif- 
ferent treaties  made  with  them  have  been  religiously  observed. 
They  receive  an  annuity  of  $450,000,  which  is  much  larger  than 
that  received  by  any  other  tribe.  Capitalized,  on  a  3  per  cent 
basis,  this  annuity  represents  $15,000,000,  which  apportioned 
among  the  tribe  would  be  equal  to  the  sum  of  $8,384  for  each 
man,  woman  and  child. 

But  the  time  will  soon  come,  under  the  present  alloting  system 
of  the  government,  when  the  Osages  will  lose  their  lands — the 
fairest  in  the  territory.  It  is  the  beginning  of  the  end.  Then,  with 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  10 

their  tribal  relations  surrendered,  and  the  protecting  arm  of  the 
government  withdrawn,  their  money  will,  under  the  influence  of 
civilization,  become  a  curse  instead  of  a  blessing. 

BARON  LA  HOUTAN'S  VOYAGE— 1699. 

From  "Travels  in  North  America  from  1689  to  1700,"  pub- 
lished in  London  in  1703. 

La  Houtan  left  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri  river  on  March 
1 7th,  1699,  and  reached  the  first  village  of  the  Missouri  tribe  of 
Indians  on  the  i8th,  and  the  second  the  next  day.  Three  leagues 
from  there  he  reached  the  mouth  of  the  Osage  river.  After  a 
skirmish  with  the  Indians  at  that  place  he  re-embarked  and  started 
down  stream.  He  landed  his  forces  at  night,  and  destroyed  a  vil- 
lage; re-embarked  again,  and  arrived  at  the  mouth  of  the  river 
on  the  25th.  There  he  met  some  Arkansas  Indians,  and  he  says  of 
them:  "All  that  I  learned  from  them  was  that  the  Missouries  and 
Osages  were  numerous  and  mischievous;  that  their  country  was 
well  watered  with  very  great  rivers ;  and,  in  a  word,  was  entirely 
too  good  for  them." 

NOTE — As  it  is  140  miles  from  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri  to 
the  mouth  of  the  Osage,  the  voyage  could  not  have  been  made 
upstream  in  canoes  in  three  days.  The  statement  of  the  dates  and 
distances  made  discredits  the  entire  story,  and  it  may  be  taken  with 
a  degree  of  allowance.  If  La  Houtan  actually  came  up  the  Mis- 
souri river  he  was  the  first  white  man  to  ascend  that  stream  of 
whom  there  is  any  account. 

PENNICANT'S  ANNALS— 1700. 

The  author  says,  in  writing  in  1700  of  a  voyage  made  from 
the  copper  mines  of  the  Sioux  country,  on  the  upper  Mississippi, 
down  the  river : 


20  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

"Six  leagues  (from  the  Illinois)  brought  us  to  the  mouth  of 
the  Ou-mis-sou-rie.  The  river  has  a  very  rapid  current,  especially 
in  the  spring  of  the  year  when  the  waters  are  high.  In  passing 
beyond  the  islands,  which  it  inundates,  it  was  up  to  the  trees  and 
'  uproots  them  and  drags  them  along  in  its  course,  and  it  is  from 
this  cause  that  the  Mississippi  is  filled  with  floating  trees.  It  also 
assumes  its  color  from  this  river,  the  source  of  which  has  never 
yet  been  discovered.  I  will  not  speak  of  the  Indians  dwelling  on 
its  banks,  because  we  have  not  yet  ascended  it." 

NOTE — The  writer  must  have  passed  the  mouth  of  the  river 
during  the  annual  June  rise,  as  his  description  indicates  that  he 
saw  it  during  a  flood. 

FATHER  JAMES  GROVIER— 1700. 

In  1700  James  Grovier,  a  Jesuit  priest,  made  a  voyage  down 
the  Mississippi.  He  says :  "The  Arkansas  river  runs  northwest, 
and  by  ascending  it  they  go  to  reach  the  river  of  the  Missouries, 
by  making  a  portage/' 

NOTE — Grovier  evidently  meant  to  say  that  the  river  runs 
southeast.  He  was  misinformed  as  to  it  being  customary  "to  make 
a  portage  between  the  Arkansas  and  the  Missouri  rivers,"  as  the 
distance  was  too  great.  He,  no  doubt,  refers  to  the  Coureurs  de 
bois — those  roving  vagabonds — who  even  as  early  as  1700  had 
become  numerous  on  the  Missouri  river  and  had  doubtless  invaded 
the  Arkansas. 

LE  SEUR— 1705. 

Previous  to  1705  all  explorers  of  the  Mississippi  came  down 
the  river  from  Canada,  but  now  the  tide  began  to  turn,  and  a 
stream  came  up  the  river  from  New  Orleans.  These  two  streams 
met  at  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri,  and  it  was  during  this  period, 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  21 

1710  to  1720,  that  Vincennes,  Kaskaskia,  Cahokia,  and  Fort  Char- 
tres  were  established. 

In  1703  Chevalier  Le  Seur  was  sent  by  De  Iberville,  com- 
mandant of  Louisiana,  at  New  Orleans,  on  a  mining  expedition  to 
the  upper  Mississippi.  On  returning  down  the  river  in  1705,  he 
arrived  at  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri  and  is  said  to  have  ascended 
that  stream  as  far  as  the  mouth  of  the  Kaw.  There  is  some  doubt 
whether  Le  Seur  ever  really  came  up  the  river,  but  there  is  no 
question  that  about  this  time  the  Missouri  was  first  explored.  In 
Le  Seur's  narrative  the  following  allusion  to  the  Missouri  river, 
and  the  different  tribes  along  that  stream,  is  found.  He  says: 
"The  Sioux  generally  keep  to  the  prairies  between  the  Mississippi 
and  the  river  of  the  Missourites  and  live  solely  by  hunting."  At 
another  place  he  says:  "We  ascertained  that  the  Agovoes  (lowas) 
and  Ottoe-ta-tees  (Otoes)  had  gone  to  station  themselves  higher 
up  on  the  side  of  the  river  of  the  Missourites,  in  the  neighborhood 
of  the  Mahas  (Omahas),  a  nation  dwelling  in  those  quarters." 
He  makes  the  following  reference  to  meeting  some  Canadians : 
"Having  gone  six  leagues,  I  halted  at  the  mouth  of  the  Ou-mis- 
souri,  where  I  met  three  Canadian  travelers.  I  received  from  them 
a  letter  from  Father  Marest,  of  the  Mission  of  the  Immaculate 
Conception  of  the  Illinois,  informing  me  that  the  Longurettes  had 
been  defeated  by  the  Sioux  and  Agavoes,  and  had  joined  with  a 
party  of  the  Mascoutans,  Foxes  and  Matiganies  to  avenge  them- 
selves. Not  upon  the  Sioux,  for  they  fear  them  too  much ;  possibly 
upon  the  Agovoes;  or  perhaps  the  Paducas  (Pawnees)  ;  or  more 
likely  on  the  Osages;  for  these  mistrust  nothing  and  the  others 
are  upon  their  guard." 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

THE  OTOES  AND  IOWAS. 

NOTE  i. — The  place  to  which  Le  Seur  says  the  Otoes  and 
lowas  went  (about  1700)  was  the  mouth  of  the  Platte,  not  far 
from  Council  Bluffs,  Iowa;  for  it  was  there  that  the  Mahas  were 
seated  when  first  known  to  the  French  at  the  beginning  of  the 
1 8th  century.  Their  village  was  on  the  east  side  of  the  river,  and 
it  was  from  them  that  the  modern  city  of  Omaha  took  its  name. 
De  Lisle's  map  confirms  the  statement  of  Le  Seur,  for  he  locates 
the  Otoes,  whom  he  calls  by  the  same  name  as  Le  Seur — the 
Ottoe-ta-toes — opposite  the  mouth  of  the  Platte,  and  the  lowas, 
whom  he  calls  the  Aiou-reau-as,  above  the  Platte,  wrhich  he  lays 
down  as  the  Revier  des  Mahas.  Both  tribes  were  then  on  the  east 
side  of  the  Missouri,  but  the  Otoes  afterward  removed  their  vil- 
lage up  the  Platte  about  50  miles  from  the  mouth.  It  is  prob- 
able that  about  1 700  the  Otoes  were  seated  near  the  mouth  of  Grand 
river,  and  it  was  from  that  locality  that  they  removed  at  the  time 
Le  Seur  refers  to.  They  were  related  to  the  Missouries,  and  Dr. 
Elliott  Coues  says  occupied  the  same  village,  which  was  the  one  on 
Bowling  Green  prairie,  below  Grand  river,  as  the  Missouris  had 
not  yet  removed  to  their  upper  village.  It  is  said  that  both  the 
Otoes  and  lowas  were  offshoots  from  the  Missouries.  This  is 
probably  true,  as  it  was  to  the  Otoes — then  on  the  Platte — that  the 
remnant  of  the  Missouris  fled  (about  1774)  when  they  were  driven 
from  Petite-sas-Plains.  The  separation  of  the  two  tribes  is  said 
to  have  been  caused  by  the  abduction  of  a  Missouri  squaw  by  a 
chief  of  the  Otoes. 

The  Otoes  were  a  small  tribe  and  did  not  number  exceeding 
500  souls,  1 20  of  whom  were  warriors.  They  were  always  a 
peaceable  tribe,  probably  on  account  of  their  numbers,  and  main- 
tained friendly  relations  with  the  early  fur  traders  and  voyaguers. 
The  remnant  of  the  tribe — which  includes  the  Missouries — now 
numbers  less  than  300.  They  are  now  on  a  reservation  in  the 
Indian  Territory  near  Ponca  Agency. 

NOTE  2. — The  village  of  the  tribe  mentioned  by  Le  Seur  as 
the  "Matiganies"  was  on  the  Wabash  river.  The  Mascoutans  are 
located  by  De  Lisle  on  the  west  side  of  Lake  Michigan,  near  Fox 
river.  The  Longuerettes  cannot  be  traced.  All  three  of  these 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  23 

tribes  are  now  extinct.  The  Foxes,  also  called  "Renards,"  were 
at  that  time  on  Green  Bay,  Michigan,  near  the  Mascoutans.  They 
had  formerly  lived  on  Lake  Huron,  but  about  1650  had  been  driven 
through  the  Straits  of  Mackinaw,  with  other  Algonquin  tribes, 
by  the  Iroquois.  Having  become  reduced  in  number  they  now 
become  united  with  the  Saukees,  or  Sacs,  and  ever  afterward  the 
united  tribes  were  known  as  the  "Sacs  and  Foxes."  About  1750 
they  removed  to  the  Des  Moines  river,  Iowa.  They  claimed  the 
country  north  of  the  Missouri  river,  and  on  Nov.  3,  1804,  the 
government,  by  treaty,  purchased  their  title. 

NOTE  3. — A  good  deal  of  latitude  has  always  been  admissible 
in  Indian  nomenclature.  The  name  of  the  tribe  which  Le  Seur 
calls  "Agovoes"  and  De  Lisle  "Ai-ou-reau-as,"  was  variously 
spelled  by  the  French,  "Agoway,"  "Agovoe,"  "Agowa,"  "loway," 
"lowae"  and  finally  "Iowa."  They  were  a  tribe  of  wanderers,  and 
their  migrations  extended  during  different  periods  all  up  and  down 
the  Missouri  river.  Their  village  was  probably  somewhere  in  the 
territory  now  embraced  in  the  state  of  Missouri  at  the  time  of 
their  removal,  as  has  been  stated,  to  the  vicinity  of  Council  Bluffs ; 
but  it  is  nowhere  shown  that  they  were  on  the  banks  of  the  Mis- 
souri river.  About  1750  they  were  seated  on  the  Chariton  river, 
in  Missouri,  near  the  Iowa  line,  having  doubtless  come  back  to 
Missouri — for  which  they  cannot  be  blamed.  They  were  living 
on  a  creek  near  Weston,  Platte  County,  Mo.,  in  1836,  when  they 
ceded  the  country  embraced  in  the  Platte  Purchase — which  they 
claimed  to  own — to  the  government. 

The  lowas  were  never  a  numerous  tribe,  although  they  were 
good  fighters  and  made  war  on  all  the  neighboring  tribes,  except 
the  ancient  Missouri's,  from  whom  it  is  said  they  were  an  offshoot. 
In  1806  they  numbered  1,600;  in  1825  they  had  been  reduced  to 
1,000;  and  in  1852  to  750  souls.  The  remnant  of  the  tribe,  now 
less  than  300,  are  on  a  reservation  in  the  Indian  Territory,  where 
they  receive  an  annuity  of  $14,450. 

FATHER   GABRIEL   MAUSEST— 1712. 

Extract  from  a  letter  written  at  Kaskaskia,  dated  November 
9th,  1712: 


24  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

"Seven  leagues  below  the  mouth  of  the  Illinois  river  is  found 
a  large  river  named  Missouri,  or  more  commonly  called  the  Pek-i- 
tan-oni,  that  is  to  say  'Muddy  Waters,'  which  empties  into  the 
Mississippi  from  the  west  side.  It  is  extremely  rapid  and  soils 
the  beautiful  waters  of  the  Mississippi,  which  runs  from  there  to 
the  sea.  It  comes  from  the  northwest,  very  near  where  the  Span- 
iards have  their  mines  in  Mexico,  and  it  is  very  convenient  for 
the  French  to  travel  in  the  country."  Again  he  says : 

"We  are  but  thirty  leagues  (83  miles)  from  the  Missouri  or 
Pek-i-tan-oni  river.  This  is  a  large  river  which  flows  into  the  Mis- 
sissippi and  they  pretend  to  say  that  it  comes  from  a  still  greater 
distance  than  that  river.  It  is  upon  the  Missouri  that  the  Spaniards 
have  their  best  mines." 

NOTE — It  will  be  observed  that  even  as  late  as  1712  the  French 
had  a  very  imperfect  knowledge  of  the  trans-Mississippi  country, 
for  this  writer  states  that  the  Missouri  river  had  its  source  in 
Mexico,  for  it  was  there  the  Spaniards  had  their  mines. 

EXPEDITIONS  OF  M.  DU  TISNE— 1719. 

In  the  spring  of  1719  Claude  Charles  du  Tisne  went  up  the 
Missouri  river  in  canoes  to  the  village  of  the  Missouries,  near  the 
mouth  of  Grand  river.  It  was  his  purpose  to  go  farther,  but  the 
Indians  would  not  permit  him  to  do  so.  He  then  returned  down 
the  river  and  made  his  way  to  the  Illinois  country,  whence  he 
soon  thereafter  crossed  the  Mississippi  river  and  set  out  overland 
from  the  mouth  of  Saline  river,  near  Ste.  Genevieve.  He  traveled 
westward,  through  what  was  then  an  unexplored  wilderness,  be- 
ing the  first  explorer  of  the  trans-Mississippi  territory. 

The  following  letter,  written  by  Du  Tisne  after  his  return  from 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  2r> 

his  last  expedition  to  De  Bienville,  the  commandant  at  New  Or- 
leans, throws  much  light  on  the  different  Indian  tribes  then  in- 
habiting the  Missouri  valley.  It  was  written  at  the  old  French 
village  of  Kaskaskia,  which  was  located  near  the  east  bank  of 
the  Mississippi,  about  fifty  miles  below  the  present  city  of  St.  Louis. 

"Kaskaskia,  Nov.  2.2,  1710. 
"Sir:— 

"You  know  that  I  have  been  obliged  to  leave  the  Missouries, 
as  they  did  not  wish  me  to  go  to  the  Pa-ni-ou-sas  (Padoucas). 
Hence  was  compelled  to  return  to  the  Illinois  to  offer  to  M.  de 
Boisebriant  (commander  of  the  post)  to  make  the  journey  across 
the  country  and  be  granted  permission  to  do  so.  The  journey  was 
attended  with  much  trouble,  as  my  men  fell  sick  on  the  way.  My 
own  health  keeps  well.  I  went  to  the  Osages  and  was  well  received 
by  them.  They  answered  me  satisfactorily  in  regard  to  themselves, 
but  when  I  spoke  of  going  to  the  Panis  (Pawnees)  they  all  opposed 
and  would  not  assent  to  the  reason  I  gave  them.  When  I  learned 
they  did  not  intend  to  let  me  take  my  goods  I  had  brought,  I  pro- 
posed to  them  to  let  me  take  three  guns  for  myself  and  my  in- 
terpreter, telling  them,  with  decision,  if  they  did  not  consent  to  this 
I  would  be  very  angry,  and  you  indignant.  They  then  consented. 
Knowing  the  character  of  these  savages  I  did  not  tarry  long,  but 
set  out  at  once,  and  in  four  days  I  reached  the  Panis,  where  I  was 
badly  received,  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  Osages  made  them  be- 
lieve that  our  intention  was  to  entrap  them  and  make  slaves  of 
them.  On  that  account  they  twice  raised  the  tomahawk  over  my 
head,  but  on  seeing  my  bravery,  when  they  threatened  me,  brutal 
as  they  are,  they  consented  to  make  an  alliance  and  treated  me 


26  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

well.  I  traded  them  three  guns,  some  powder,  axes  and  a  few 
knives  for  two  horses  and  a  mule;  marked  with  a  Spanish  brand. 
I  proposed  to  them  to  let  me  pass  through  to  the  Padoucas.  To 
this  they  would  not  consent  at  all.  Seeing  their  opposition,  I  ques- 
tioned them  in  regard  to  the  Spanish.  They  said  the  Spanish  had 
formerly  been  to  their  village,  but  now  the  Padoucas  prevented 
them.  They  traded  me  a  silver  cup,  which  they  had  obtained 
from  the  Spanish,  and  told  me  it  would  take  more  than  a  month 
to  go  to  the  Spanish  settlements.  It  seems  to  me  that  we  may 
succeed  in  effecting  a  treaty  of  peace  between  this  tribe  and  the 
Padoucas,  and  thereby  open  a  route  to  the  Spanish  (in  Mexi- 
co). It  could  be  done  by  giving  them  back  their  slaves  and  some 
presents.  We  might  also  attempt  a  passage  to  the  Missouri  river, 
going  to  the  Pani-Mahas.  (The  Mahas,  a  tribe  then  seated  near 
Council  Bluffs).  I  offered  M.  de  Boisebriant  to  go  there  myself, 
and  if  you  desire  it  I  am  ready  to  execute  it. 

"I  send  this  letter  by  a  Manto  chief,  whom  I  met  among 
the  Osages.  He  has  sold  some  slaves  for  me  to  the  Natchitoches 
(a  tribe  of  Indians  on  Red  river).  He  has  promised  me  to  come 
to  the  Illinois  and  bring  some  horses.  The  Panis  have  also  prom- 
ised to  come  next  spring.  As  the  Osages  would  give  me  no 
guide  to  return  to  the  Illinois,  I  was  obliged  to  find  my  own  way 
with  the  compass ;  having  fourteen  horses  and  one  mule  along  with 
me.  I  had  the  misfortune  to  lose  six  horses,  which  is  a  loss  of 
several  hundred  francs  to  me.  I  refer  you  to  M.  Boisebriant  for 
the  many  difficulties  I  have  passed  through.  Being  one  of  the 
oldest  officials  in  the  command  I  hope  you  will  do  me  the  favor  to 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  27 

procure  me  a  company.     I  shall  try  to  meet  your  kindness  by  my 
faithfulness  to  the  service. 

"I  am  with  respects.  "Du  TISNE." 

"To  Gov.  De  Iberville,  New  Orleans." 

The  following  is  an  extract  from  the  journal  of  Du  Tisne, 
translated  from  "Margry's  Memoirs,"  by  Mr.  E.  A.  K.  Killian, 
Secretary  of  the  Quivira  Historical  Society  :* 

"From  the  village  of  Kaskaskia,  on  the  Mississippi,  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Missouri,  is  32  leagues  (75  miles).  The  Missouri 
is  very  turbid  and  full  of  obstacles  from  driftwood  and  extensive 
shallows  and  a  strong  current.  It  flows  from  the  Missouries-  (the 
village  of  the  Missouries),  S.  E.,  although  it  makes  many  times  a 
complete  circumvolution  of  the  compass.  It  is  well  wooded  with 
walnut,  locust,  sycamore  and  oak  trees.  Very  fine  soil  and  some 
rocky  hills  are  seen.  At  intervals  on  the  west  side  of  the  stream, 
two  fine  rivers  flow  into  it.  The  first  is  the  Blue  river  (the  Gas- 
conade) which  is  not  great  in  importance.  The  second  is  the  river 
of  the  Osages,  whose  village  is  80  leagues  (about  220  miles)  above. 
A  perogue  can  go  20  leagues  (55  miles)  above;  S.  W.  from  the 
village. 

"The  river  of  the  Osages  is  10  leagues  (25  miles)  above  the 
mouth  of  Blue  river,  and  40  leagues  (no  miles)  above  the  mouth 
of  the  Missouri.  In  the  vicinity  of  the  Osages  there  are  lead  mines 
in  abundance,  and  it  is  also  believed  there  are  silver  mines. 


*Mr.  Killian  is  recognized  as  one  of  the  most  scholarly,  painstaking 
and  reliable  historians  of  the  Missouri  valley.  The  writer  is  indebted  to 
him  for  assistance  in  the  preparation  of  this  paper,  and  especially  for  notes 
obtained  from  the  "Memoirs  and  Discoveries  of  Pierre  Margry";  a  collection 
of  documents  and  journals  pertaining1  to  the  French  occupancy  of  North 
America. 


28  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

"The  prairie  begins  10  leagues  (27  miles)  beyond  their  vil- 
lage." 

"The  Missouries  are  jealous  because  the  French  go  to  other 
nations.  Their  people  stay  only  in  the  springtime  at  their  vil- 
lage, and  hunt  the  wild  cattle  (buffalo)  in  the  fall  and  winter. 
One  league  south  of  them  is  a  village  of  the  Osages,  which  is  30 
leagues  (82  miles)  from  their  great  village  on  their  river.  (The 
writer  is  now  referring  to  the  village  of  the  Little  Osages,  on  the 
Missouri  river,  near  the  mouth  of  Grand  river).  One  can  go  from 
the  Missouries  (near  the  mouth  of  Grand  river)  to  the  Pani-Mahas 
(Maha  tribe,  near  Council  Bluffs)  and  from  there  to  the  Pacloucas 
(on  the  Platte)  by  the  Missouri  river." 

"The  great  village  of  the  Osages  is  situated  on  an  elevation  a 

f 

league  and  a  half  (about  4  miles)  from  their  river  to  the  north- 
west. This  village  is  composed  of  one  hundred  lodges  and  two 
hundred  warriors.  They  stay  in  their  village,  like  the  Missouries, 
and  pass  the  winter  in  chasing  the  buffalo,  which  are  very  abund- 
ant in  these  parts.  Horses,  which  they  steal  from  the  Panas,  can 
be  bought  of  them,  also  deer  skins  and  buffalo  robes.  They  have 
some  chiefs  of  bands  but  few  have  absolute  authority.  They  are 
a  well  built  people,  but  in  general  are  treacherous  and  break  their 
word  easily.  There  is  a  lead  mine  12  leagues  from  here,  but  they 
do  not  know  what  use  to  make  thereof." 

"From  the  Osages  to  the  Panas  is  40  leagues  (no  miles)  to 
the  S.  W.,  and  the  whole  route  is  over  prairies  abounding  in  cat- 
tle. The  land  is  fine  and  well  watered.  There  are  four  rivers 
from  the  Osages  to  the  Panas,  which  have  to  be  crossed.  The 
most  considerable  is  the  Arcansas,  which  has  its  source  toward  the 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  29 

N.  W.  This  river  is  12  leagues  (33)  miles  east  of  the  Panis'  vil- 
lage. It  is  situated  on  the  bank  of  a  creek,  on  a  hill,  surrounded 
by  elevated  prairies.  One  league  to  the  N.  W.  is  another  village, 
as  large  as  the  first  one.  There  are  in  these  two  villages  three 
hundred  horses,  which  they  value  so  much  that  they  do  not  like 
to  part  with  them.  Their  nature  is  very  brutal,  but  it  would  be 
easy  to  subdue  them  by  making  them  presents  of  guns,  of  which 
they  have  only  six  among  them  all.  There  are  other  Panic  villages 
to  the  west  and  northwest,  but  they  are  not  known  to  us.  According 
to  their  reports  it  is  fifteen  clays'  journey  to  the  Padoucas  (on  the 
Platte)  but  they  encounter  them  frequently  in  six  days'  journey. 
They  have  a  cruel  war  now  between  them,  so  that  they  nearly  eat 
one  another  up.  When  they  go  to  war  they  harness  their  horses 
in  a  cuirraiss  of  tanned  leather.  They  are  clever  with  the  bow  and 
arrow  and  also  use  a  lance,  which  is  like  the  end  of  a  sword  in- 
serted in  a  handle  of  wood.  Two  days'  journey  to  the  West,  or 
Southwest,  is  a  salt  mine.  Every  time  they  give  food  to  a  stranger 
the  chief  cuts  the  meat  into  pieces  and  puts  them  into  the  mouth 
of  those  they  regale." 

NOTE — On  the  27th  of  September,  1719,  Du  Tisne  planted  a 
white  flag  in  the  middle  of  this  village  and  took  his  departure  in 
a  northeasterly  direction  for  the  Missouri  river.  He  arrived  at 
that  river,  6  leagues  (about  17  miles)  above  the  mouth  of  Grand 
river,  at  what  is  known  today  as  Petite-sas-Plains.  This  location, 
one  of  the  most  historic  in  Missouri,  has  elsewhere  been  described. 
It  was  at  that  time  the  home  of  the  unfortunate  Missouries,  and 
also  a  branch  of  the  Osages  known  as  the  "Little  Osages,"  or 
the  "Little  Tribe."  The  village  of  the  latter  is  described  by  Du 
Tisne  as  having  been  one  league,  or  about  three  miles,  southwest 
from  the  former,  which  was  absolutely  correct.  The  locations  of 
these  old  villages  are  still  sufficiently  well  defined  to  be  accurately 


30  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

determined.  When  Lewis  and  Clark  came  up  the  river,  in  1804, 
they  were  pointed  out  to  them.  They  were  well  known  then,  as 
they  had  only  been  abandoned  about  thirty  years.  The  Osage  vil- 
lage, the  larger  of  the  two,  was  north  of  the  town  of  Malta  Bend, 
Mo.,  one  mile  and  a  quarter,  and  a  quarter  of  a  mile  west.  It  was 
on  a  farm  now  owned  by  Mrs.  A.  G.  Dicus.  'The  other — that 
of  the  Missouries — -was  situated  three  and  a  half  miles  north  of 
the  town  and  the  same  distance  east.  It  was  on  a  tract  of  land 
now  owned  bv  Benjamin  McRoberts. 

The  location  of  the  village  of  the  Great  Osages,  on  the  Osage 

river,  when  visited  by  Du  Tisne,  is  not  so  easily  determined.  When 

•« 

Pike  came  up  the  Osage  river,  in  1806,  they  were  seated  at  what 
was  afterward  known  as  "Old  Harmony  Mission,"  near  Pappins- 
ville,  Bates  County,  Mo.,  on  the  river.  The  topography  of  the 
country,  there,  does  not  correspond  with  the  description  given  by 
Du  Tisne,  for  it  is  in  a  beautiful  prairie  country,  which  extends 
far  westward.  Du  Tisne  says  that  the  prairies  began  10  leagues, 
or  about  27  miles,  westward  from  the  village  which  he  visited.  This 
would  fix  the  location  near  Osceola,  in  St.  Clair  county,  which  was 
probably  the  true  location  of  the  village  in  1719.  The  Osages,  like 
all  other  tribes,  were  migratory,  and  may  have  moved  their  vil- 
lage higher  up  the  river,  or  there  may  have  been  more  than  one 
village.* 

It  is  stated  by  Du  Tisne  that  he  traveled  four  days  in  a  south- 
westerly direction,  in  going  from  the  Osage  village  to  the  Pawnees. 
He  estimated  the  distance  at  no  miles.  He  also  says  the  Paw- 
nee villages  were  12  leagues,  or  33  miles,  west  of  the  river  he 
calls  the  "Arcansas."  He  doubtless  meant  the  Neosho,  a  branch  of 
the  Arkansas.  The  location  of  these  villages  are  unknown,  but 


*De  L.isle'3   map,    (1703)    lays   down   four   villages   on   the   river. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  31 

from  the  distance  traveled,  the  course,  and  the  distance,  from 
the  Neosho  river,  they  were  probably  situated  on  Cabin  creek,  in 
what  is  now  Cherokee  County,  Ind.  Ty.,  near  Vinita. 

After  Du  Tisne  had  visited  the  Great  Osages  and  the  Pawnees, 
and  had  spent  some  time  with  the  two  tribes  on  the  Missouri  river, 
he  crossed  over  to  the  north  side  and  set  out  down  that  stream 
for  the  Illinois  country,  where  he  arrived  about  the  first  of  No- 
vember, 1719. 

• 

CHARLEVOIX— 1721. 

Extract  from  a  letter  written  at  Kaskaskia,  October  2Oth,  1721. 
Charlevoix  was  the  most  intelligent  and  reliable  of  all  the  early 
French  explorers  and  historians.  He  says : 

"The  Osages  are  a  pretty  numerous  nation  settled  on  the 
side  of  a  river  that  bears  their  name  and  which  enters  into  the 
Missouri  about  40  leagues  (no  miles)  from  its  junction  with  the 
Mississippi.  They  send  once  or  twice  a  year  the  Calumet  among 
the  Kaskaskias,  and  are  actually  here  at  present.  I  have  also 
just  now  seen  a  Missouri  woman,  who  told  me  her  nation  was 
the  first  we  met  when  going  up  the  Missouri  river,  from  which  she 
has  the  name  we  have  given  her,  for  want  of  knowing  her  true 
name.  It  is  situated  80  leagues  (220  miles)  from  the  confluence 
of  that  river  with  the  Mississippi.  This  woman  has  confirmed 
me,  from  what  I  have  heard  from  the  Sioux,  that  the  Missouri  river 
runs  out  of  some  naked  mountains,  very  high  up,  beyond  which 
there  is  a  great  river,  which  probably  rises  from  there  also,  and 
which  runs  to  the  west.  This  testimony  carries  some  weight,  be- 
cause of  all  the  Indians  we  know  none  travels  farther  west  than 
the  Missouries." 


32  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

"I  can  make  no  doubt,  in  -weighing  the  information  we  have 
had  from  many  places,  and  which  agrees  pretty  well  together,  that 
by  endeavoring  to  penetrate  to  the  source  of  the  Missouri  one 
would  find  wherewithal  to  make  amends  for  the  charge  and  the 
fatigue  of  such  an  enterprise." 

Of  the  Missouri  and  the  Mississippi  he  says : 

"After  we  had  gone  five  leagues  on  the  Mississippi  we  ar- 
rived at  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri,  which  runs  north,  northwest 
and  southeast.  *I  believe  this  is  the  finest  confluence  in  the  world. 
The  two  rivers  are  much  the  same  breadth,  each  about  half  a  league. 
The  Missouri  by  far  the  most  rapid  and  seems  to  enter  the  Missis- 
sippi like  a  conqueror,  through  which  it  carries  its  dark  waters  to 
the  opposite  shore  without  mixing  them.  Afterward  it  gives  color 
to  the  Mississippi  which  it  never  loses  again,  but  carries  it  quite 
down  to  the  sea." 

NOTE — It  will  be  seen  from  this  letter  that  the  author  had 
formed  a  pretty  correct  conception  of  the  Missouri  river,  its  course, 
and  distances  from  one  locality  to  another,  although  it  had  not 
even  yet  been  explored,  except  by  the  French  voyageurs,  for  any 
great  distance.  His  reference  to  the  Rocky  Mountains  applies  well 
to  the  Black  Hills;  he  had  the  proper  conception  of  the  Columbia 
river;  and  a  correct  knowledge  of  the  course  of  the  Missouri.  He 
states  that  it  was  no  miles  to  the  mouth  of  the  Osage  from  the 
mouth  of  the  Missouri,  while  the  distance  is,  in  fact,  140  miles; 
and  that  it  was  220  miles  to  the  Missouri  village  near  Grand  river, 
when  the  correct  distance,  is,  according  to  surveys  of  the  United 
States  engineers,  250  miles.  So  it  will  be  seen  that  the  Indian 
woman's  estimate  of  the  distance  to  her  village  was  very  nearly 
correct.  The  calumet  referred  to,  or  Indian  pipe,  was  the-  solemn 
emblem  of  peace — the  token  of  Indian  brotherhood — and  a  formal 
declaration  of  entire  forgiveness  of  past  injury  and  a  pledge  of 
future  good  will  and  friendship.  It  was  universally  so  regarded 
among  all  savage  tribes. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  33 

BOURGMONT'S  EXPEDITION— 1724. 
During  the  entire  period  of  the  French  occupancy  of  the  Mis- 
souri valley  (1673-1763)  there  was  a  continuous  conflict  between 
Spain  and  France  for  supremacy  in  the  country  west  of  the  Missis- 
sippi. In  1720  a  Spanish  caravan  was  sent  from  Santa  Fe  to  the 
Missouri  river  to  drive  back  the  French,  who  even  then  were  be- 
coming numerous  among  the  different  tribes  along  that  stream. 

The  fate  of  that  expedition  will  ever  be  enshrouded  in  mystery, 

« 
for  with  it  was  connected  one  of  the  darkest  tragedies  known  in 

the  annals  of  the  West.  By  a  shrewd  piece  of  strategy  the 
invaders  were  thrown  off  their  guard  by  the  Indians  and  massacred, 
but  by  what  tribe  the  deed  was  done,  or  where,  was  never  known. 

The  arrival  of  this  expedition  from  so  great  a  distance  alarmed 
the  French,  and  M.  Du  Bourgmont  was  sent  up  the  Missouri  river 
with  instructions  to  "build  a  fort  somewhere  above  the  mouth 
of  the  Osage."  He  came  up  in  the  spring  of  1724,  and,  as  this 
voyage  is  the  first,  excepting  that  of  La  Houtan's,  of  which  any 
account  has  been  preserved,  it  becomes  of  great  interest. 

The  fort,  called  "Fort  Orleans,"  was  established  opposite  the 
village  of  the  Missouris,  near  Grand  river,  the  location  of  which 

has  been  described.     Bourgmont  then  proceeded  up  the  river — di- 

t 

viding  his  force,  part  going  up  the  river  in  canoes  and  the  re- 
mainder overland.  They  arrived  at  the  Kansas  village — located 
on  the  Missouri  river  above  the  mouth  of  the  Kaw,  where  the  town 
of  Doniphan,  Kas.,  is  now  situated,*  and  there  held  a  powwow  with 
the  Indians,  the  following  tribes  being  represented,  viz :  the  lowas, 

*Mr.    Geo.    J.    Remsburo,    an    acknowledged  authority  on  Western  history, 
has  located  this  old  village  at  Doniphan,  Kansas. 


34  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

Missouris,  Kansans,  Otoes  and  Osages.  After  a  general  debauch, 
continuing  several  days,  the  motley  crew,  consisting  of  French, 
half-breed  coureurs-de-bois,  and  Indians,  among  the  latter  being  68 
Osages  and  109  Missouris,  who  had  followed  Bourgmont  from 
the  mouth  of  Grand  river,  proceeded  to  the  Platte,  where  they  spent 
some  time  in  visiting  the  Pawnees,  called  by  Bourgmont  the  "Pa- 
ducas." 

The  following  extract,  taken  from  Bourgmont' s  journal,  will 
prove  interesting.  He  says : 

"Fort  Orleans,  Sunday,  June  25th,  1724.  The  detachment 
which  is  to  go  by  water  set  out  for  the  Canzas  and  the  Paducas.  It 
is  commanded  by  M.  de  Saint  Ange,  ensign  at  Fort  Orleans.  He 
has  with  him  one  sergeant,  two  corporals,  eleven  privates,  five 
Canadian  voyageurs  and  two  Indian  servants." 

Saturday,  July  8th. 

"Saint  Ange  sent  an  Indian  runner  to  the  Canzas  village  to 
report  to  me  that  the  perogues  and  canoes  could  not  proceed  on 
account  of  several  of  the  Frenchmen  having  fever,  and  requests  that 
five  additional  men  be  sent  to  help  tow  the  boats." 

Sunday,  July  Qth. 

"The  five  men  were  sent  off  down  the  river." 

Sunday,  July  i6th. 

"St.  Ange  arrived  (at  the  Canzas  village)  at  2:00  p.  m.  with 
the  boats.  Hindered  by  sickness  and  low  stage  of  the  water." 

THE  MISSOURIES. 

NOTE  i. — The  history  of  the  Missouri  tribe,  "the  Qu-mis- 
sou-ri-tes,"  as  they  were  called  by  the  early  French  explorers,  aft- 
erwards known  as  the  "Ancient  Missouries,"  is  most  pathetic,  and 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  35 

illustrates  most  forcibly  the  sad  fate  that  befell  many  tribes  of  the 
aborigines.  There  is  no  doubt  that  they  were  seated  near  the 
mouth  of  the  Missouri  river  when  first  known  to  the  French  (1673- 
1682),  and  that  they  were  then  a  numerous  tribe.  As  has  been 
seen,  they  were  driven  higher  up  the  river  about  that  time  by  the 
invasion  of  the  Iroquois,  and  doubtless  many  of  them  were  killed. 
This  merciless  slaughter,  with  the  ravages  of  that  terrible  scourge 
of  the  American  Indian — the  smallpox — must  have  greatly  reduced 
their  number,  for  they  were  never  a  numerous  people  after  the 
close  of  the  Seventeenth  century,  when  ihecourieurs  dc  bois  first 
began  to  visit  them. 

On  De  Lisle's  map  (1703)  their  villages  are  located  on  the 
Missouri  river  a  short  distance  above  the  Osage,  and  there  were 
evidences  when  that  section  was  first  settled  (1818)  of  an  Indian 
village  and  burial  ground  on  the  north  side  of  the  river,  directly 
opposite  Jefferson  City,  and  another  at  the  mouth  of  Moniteau 
creek,  just  above.  The  writer  visited  these  localities  many  years 
ago — when  a  boy — and  saw,  in  exhumed  skulls  and  bones,  and  in 
broken  pieces  of  pottery,  arrow  heads  and  other  relics,  the  evi- 
dences of  which  he  speaks. 

Henri  Tonty  (writing  in  1699)  says  the  Missouries  were  150 
league  (400  miles)  up  the  river,  but  he  was  evidently  misinformed, 
as  to  the  distance,  for  this  would  locate  them  nearly  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Kaw.  The  distances  given  by  the  Jesuit  chroniclers  are 
not  always  to  be  relied  on,  as  they  received  their  information 
solely  from  the  Indians,  who  were  frequently,  no  doubt,  misun- 
derstood, from  the  want  of  an  interpreter. 

About  1700  the  Missouries  came  still  further  up  the  river, 
and  this  time  located  on  Bowling  Green  prairie,  on  the  north 
side  of  the  river,  about  ten  miles  below  the  mouth  of  Grand  river. 
The  location  of  this  old  village  was  pointed  out  to  Lewis  and  Clark 


36  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

when  they  came  up  the  river  in  1804  by  their  half-breed  guides, 
although  they  state  that  not  a  vestige  of  it  then  remained.  They  also 
say  that  the  Missouries,  several  years  before,  had  been  attacked  at 
this  village  by  the  Sacs  and  Foxes,  and  having  lost  200  of  their 
best  warriors,  the  remnant  of  the  tribe,  consisting  of  only  30  fam- 
ilies, fled  across  the  river  and  took  refuge  with  the  Little  Osages, 
whose  village,  as  has  been  seen  in  the  history  of  that  tribe,  was 
on  Pe-tite-sas  Plains,  about  18  miles  above  Grand  river.*  There  can 
be  no  question  that  both  tribes  were  at  this  place  in  1719  when 
visited  by  Du  Tisne,  and  in  1724  when  visited  by  Bourgmont,  for 
the  locations  of  their  villages  are  well  known  today,  and  are  just 
where  they  were  described  by  Du  Tisne. 

There  has  always  been  a  controversy  among  historians  as  to 
the  exact  location  of  old  Fort  Orleans,  a  matter  of  some  interest, 
as  it  was  the  first  fort  established  west  of  the  Mississippi.  All 
agree  that  it  was  on  an  island  in  the  Missouri  river  opposite  the 
village  of  the  Missouris;  which  has  long  since  disappeared.  The 
journal  of  Du  Tisne  seems  to  settle  the  question.  He  was  at 
this  village  in  1719 — the  one  above  Grand  river — for  it  was  near 
the  Osage  village.  Bourgmont  did  not  come  up  the  river  until 
1724,  hence  must  have  built  the  fort  at  the  upper  village  above 
Grand  river. 

About  1774  both  the  Osage  and  Missourie  villages  were  again 
attacked  by  their  relentless  enemies,  and  both  tribes  were  almost 
annihilated.  Lewis  and  Clark  state  that  when  they  came  up  both 


*Du  Pratz,  in  his  "Historie  de  la  Louisiana."  (1755)  refers  to  this 
battle  and  says:  "The  Missouris  have  been  engaged  in  a  war  with  the  Sacs 
and  Foxes  and  lost  200  warriors." 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  37 

villages — which  they  locate  on  Petite-sas-Plains — had  been  aband- 
oned about  30  years,  which  would  fix  the  date  of  the  exodus  about 
the  above  year  (1774).  There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  the 
final  battle  fought  here  resulted  in  a  massacre  and  a  rout  and 
probably  in  the  burning  of  the  wigwams.  The  number  of  human 
skeletons  found  near  the  surface  of  the  ground,  which  have  been 
turned  up  by  the  plowr-share,  indicates  that  the  bodies  did  not  re- 
ceive the  sacred  sepulcher  which  even  savages  accorded  their  dead. 
That  the  lodges  were  burned  seems  evident  from  the  condition  of 
the  relics  found,  such  as  gun-barrels,  kettles,  etc.,  all  of  which 
bear,  in  their  bent  and  broken  condition,  evidence  of  having  been 
subjected  to  fire. 

After  this  battle  the  few  Osages  left  fled  to  their  kindred — 
the  Great  Osages — on  the  Osage  river,  and  established  a  village  of 
their  own  a  few  miles  below  Pappinsville,  at  a  place  called  Balls- 
town.  The  remnant  of  the  poor  Missouries — now  few  and  with- 
out a  home — again  fled  up  the  river  and  this  time  sought  refuge 
with  their  kindred,  the  Otoes,  or  the  "Ottoe-ta-toes,"  as  Le  Seur 
called  them,  whose  village  was  not  far  above  Council  Bluffs.  There 
they  became  merged  into  that  tribe  and  forever  lost  their  identity 
as  a  distinct  nation. 

While  the  story  of  the  unfortunate  Missouries  is  a  sad  one,  and 
they  have  long  since  become  extinct,  they  have  left  behind  them 
in  the  grand  old  river,  on  whose  banks  they  dwelt,  a  name  which 
will  perpetuate  their  memory  as  long  as  its  waters  flow  to  the 
Gulf. 


38  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

THE  KANSAN  INDIANS. 

NOTE  2. — The  Kansan  Indians  have  been  variously  known  as 
"Canse,"  "Kanzans,"  the  "Kansa,"  "Kanzas,"  "Okanas,"  "Cnn- 
zas,"  (as  Bourgmont  called  them)  and  the  "Kaws."  When  visited 
by  Bourgmont,  which  was  the  first  known  definitely  of  them,  they 
occupied  the  territory  between  the  Missouri  river  and  the  Kaw. 
and  roved  westward  ad  libitum.  They  were  the  most  degraded  of 
all  the  Western  tribes,  and  were  in  fact  a  band  of  robbers  and 
thieves.  Their  principal  occupation  was  robbing  the  early  fur- 
traders,  and  for  that  purpose  they  lay  in  wait,  about  Cow  island, 
and  other  localities,  above  the  mouth  of  the  Kaw,  and  robbed  and 
murdered  the  unwary  Frenchmen  as  they  came  up  the  river  in 
their  canoes.  To  such  an  extent  was  this  piracy  carried,  and  so 
dangerous  did  it  become  to  pass  this  locality,  that  during  a  period 
about  1750  the  traders  went  up  Grand  river  to  its  headwaters 
and  from  there  made  a  portage  across  to  the  Missouri  river,  coming 
in  above  St.  Joseph. 

On  December  3Oth,  1825,  a  treaty  was  made  with  the  Kan- 
san Indians  by  which  they  exchanged  their  lands  near  the  mouth 
of  the  Kaw  for  a  strip  thirty  miles  wide  along  that  river,  beginning 
60  miles  from  the  mouth.  Their  principal  village,  in  1840,  was 
near  Topeka,  but  about  1850  they  removed  to  Council  Grove, 
Kansas.  During  the  J6os  they  were  removed,  with  other  tribes, 
to  the  Indian  Territory.  In  1825  their  number  was  estimated  at 
1,700,  and  in  1835  at  1,200.  The  remnant  of  the  tribe,  numbering 
about  200,  is  now  on  a  reservation  near  the  Osage  Agency.  All 
attempts  to  civilize  them  have  proved  futile,  and  they  are  today 
among  the  lowest  and  most  degraded  of  the  race. 

DANIEL  COXE— 1726. 

"A  Description  of  the  English  Province  of  Carolana,  by  the 
Spanish  called  Florida  and  by  the  French  La  Louisian"  printed  in 
London  in  1726. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  39 

Coxe  was  an  Englishman  and  the  owner  of  a  grant  of 
land  extending  from  the  coast  of  South  Carolina  to  the  Mississippi 
river  or  "from  sea  to  sea" ;  issued  by  Charles  I.  of  England.  He 
owned  the  first  ship  to  enter  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  (1699) 
and  made  a  futile  effort  to  establish  a  colony  on  that  river.  In 
describing  the  Missouri  river  and  the  country  through  which  it 
runs,  he  says: 

"The  great  'Yellow  River'  to  the  west,  is  so  named  because 
it  is  yellow  and  so  muddy  that  though  the  Mes-che-ce-be  (Missis- 
sippi) is  very  clear,  where  they  meet,  and  so  many  rivers  of  chrys- 
taline  waters  below  mix  with  the  Mes-che-ce-be,  yet  it  discolors 
them  all  even  unto  the  sea.  When  you  are  up  that  river  60  or 
70  leagues  you  meet  with  two  branches,  the  lesser,  though  large, 
proceeds  from  the  south  and  is  called  the  River  of  the  Osages, 
from  a  numerous  people  who  have  16  or  18  villages  seated  thereon, 
especially  near  its  mixing  with  the  Yellow  river.  The  other,  which 
is  the  main  branch,  comes  from  the  west.  The  Yellow  is  also 
called  the  river  of  the  Missourites,  from  a  great  nation  inhabiting 
many  towns  near  its  junction  with  the  river  of  the  Osages." 

"It  will  be  one  great  convenience  to  this  country  if  it  ever  be- 
comes settled,  that  there  is  an  easy  communication  to  the  South 
Sea,  which  lies  between  America  and  China,  by  the  north  branch 
of  the  great  Yellow  river,  by  the  natives  called  the  River  of  the 
Missourites,  which  has  a  course  of  500  miles  navigable  to  its 
head,  or  springs,  and  which  proceeds  from  a  ridge  of  hills,  passable 
by  a  horse,  foot  or  wagon,  in  less  than  half  a  day,  somewhat  north 
of  M.exico.  On  the  other  side  are  rivers  which  run  into  a  great 


40  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

lake  that  empties  itself  by  another  great  navigable  river  into  the 
South  Sea." 

NOTE  i. — Coxe  was  evidently  impressed  with  the  same  erron- 
eous belief  that  was  entertained  by  most  of  the  early  explorers, 
that  there  was  a  waterway  somewhere  through  the  Western  Hem- 
isphere by  which  the  South  Sea  and  China  might  be  reached.  Mar- 
quette  possessed  the  same  idea  when  he  first  discovered  the  Mis- 
souri, for  he  said:  "I  hope  by  its  means  to  make  the  discovery 
of  the  Vermillion,  or  California  Sea."  La  Salle  had  the  same  im- 
pression, for  when  he  discovered  that  the  Mississippi  discharged 
itself  into  the  Gulf  of  Miexico,  "he  conceived  the  hope  of  reaching 
the  South  Sea  by  the  Missouri  river."  Indeed,  Frontenac,  when 
he  sent  Joliet  down  the  Mississippi,  wrote  to  his  home  government, 
in  France,  "that  he  would  in  all  probably  prove  once  for  all  that 
the  great  river  flowed  into  the  Gulf  of  California." 

NOTE  2. — The  description  given  by  the  writer  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  is  amusing,  and  shows  how  little  was  known,  even  as 
late  as  1726,  of  the  geography  of  the  Western  country,  although 
both  Coxe  and  Charlevoix  must  have  had  some  conception  of 
Great  Salt  Lake  and  the  Columbia  river. 

NOTE  3. — It  will  be  observed  that  the  early  French  explorers 
made  repeated  efforts  to  give  names  to  the  two  great  watercourses 
of  the  West,  which  fortunately  failed,  else  they  would  not  today 
bear  the  beautiful  a.nd  poetic  Indian  names  which  they  do.  Mar- 
quette — the  religious  zealot — called  the  Mississippi  the  "Concep- 
tion," La  Salle  called  it  the  "River  Colbert,"  after  the  Minister  of 
Marines  of  France.  It  was  called  by  Le  Page  Du  Pratz  the 
"River  St.  Louis,"  after  the  French  king,  and  it  remained  for 
the  Englishman,  Daniel  Coxe,  to  restore  the  musical  Indian  name 
"Mes-che-ce-be,"  by  which  it  was  known  by  the  Indians  on  Lake 
Superior  as  early  as  1670.  The  name  is  a  Chippewa  word,  and 
means  in  the  dialect  of  the  tribe  "The  Father  of  Running  Waters." 
It  was  an  easy  transition  to  the  more  modern  name  "Mississippi." 

The  Missouri  river,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  called  by  Mar- 
quette,  the  "Pek-i-tan-oni,"  and  it  is  so  laid  down  on  many  of  the 
early  maps.  It  was  an  Indian  name  meaning  "Muddy  Water."  It 
was  also  called  the  "Osage  River,"  being  doubtless,  confounded 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  41 

with  that  stream.  Coxe  calls  it  the  "Yellow  river,"  although  he 
also  refers  to  it  by  the  name  by  which  it  was  generally  known — 
the  "River  of  the  Missovtrites."  The  latter  name  was  very  appro- 
priately given  it  by  La  Salle,  from  the  Indian  tribe  which  at  that 
time  dwelt  near  its  mouth.  This  name,  as  has  been  seen,  was 
variously  spelled  by  the  early  French  "E-mis-sou-ri-tes,"  "Ou- 
mis-sou-ri-tes"  and  "Mis-sou-ri-tes."  In  the  course  of  time, 
through  the  jargon  of  the  French  voyageurs,  it  passed  through 
many  changes,  until  it  finally  settled  down  to  the  present  form — 
Missouri.  The  word  simply  meant,  in  the  Indian  dialect,  and  as 
applied  to  the  stream,  "Dwellers  at  the  mouth  of  the  River,"  and 
there  appears  to  be  no  foundation  for  the  general  belief  that  the 
name  was  characteristic  of  the  river  and  meant  "Muddy  Water." 

FATHER  LOUIS  VIVIER— 1750. 

Excerpt  from  a  letter  written  at  Kaskaskia,  Nov.  i/th,  1750: 
"Before  its  junction  with  the  Missouri  the  Mississippi  is 
not  considerable.  It  has  very  little  current,  while,  on  the  con- 
trary, the  Missouri  is  larger,  deeper  and  more  rapid,  and  takes 
its  source  from  a  greater  distance.  Several  large  rivers  flow  into 
the  Mississippi,  but  it  seems  the  Missouri  also  furnishes  more  water 
than  all  the  others  together.  Here  is  the  proof:  The  water  of 
the  greater  part,  I  might  say  of  all  the  rivers  that  the  Mississippi 
receives,  is  but  .moderately  good,  that  of  some  .positively  unwhole- 
some. That  of  the  Mississippi,  even,  before  its  alliance  with  the 
Missouri,  is  not  of  the  best.  On  the  contrary,  the  water  of  the 
Missouri  is  the  best  in  the  world.  Now  that  the  Mississippi,  after 
its  junction  with  the  Missouri,  becomes  excellent,  therefore  the 
water  of  the  Missouri  must  be  dominant." 


42  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

NOTE — The  statement  of  Father  Vivier,  as  to  the  purity  of 
the  waters  of  the  Missouri  river,  and  of  the  Mississippi,  after  their 
confluence,  is  not  in  accord  with  the  prevailing  opinion,  but  is 
nevertheless  true.  While  muddy,  from,  the  sand  held  in  solution, 
the  very  presence  of  this  sand  serves  to  purify  it  and  render  it 
wholesome.  And  when  clarified,  by  settling,  it  is  true  that  there 
is  "no  better  water  in  the  world." 

Several  years  ago  a  test  was  made  in  Paris,  France,  of  waters 
taken  from  streams  in  different  parts  of  the  world,  to  ascertain 
which  would  continue  pure  and  wholesome  for  the  longest  period 
of  time;  it  being  important  that  this  fact  should  be  ascertained  for 
the  benefit  of  ships  sailing  on  long  voyages  at  sea.  After  a  thor- 
ough test,  the  water  taken  from  the  lower  Mississippi,  which  as- 
sumes its  character  from  the  Missouri,  was  pronounced  the  best. 

LE  PAGE  DU  PRATZ— 1756. 

Excerpt  from  his  "History  of  Louisiana,"  published  with  a 
map  of  the  country,  in  1756: 

"The  Missouri  takes  its  source  800  leagues,  as  well  as  can 
be  ascertained,  from  the  place  where  it  empties  into  the  St.  Louis 
(Mississippi).  Its  waters  are  muddy,  troubled  and  charged  with 
niter,  and  it  is  because  of  these  waters  that  the  river  St.  Louis  is 
so  muddy  to  the  sea.  The  reason  of  the  color  is  that  the  latter 
takes  its  course  over  sand  and  firm  ground,  while  the  former 
flows  over  fertile  ground  where  one  sees  but  few  rocks;  and 
although  the  Missouri  comes  from  a  mountain,  towards  New 
Mexico,  we  must  remember  that  all  the  country  through  which 
it  passes  is  for  the  most  part  rich  soil. 

"The  river  not  having  been  ascended  by  the  French  but  for  a 
short  distance,  about  300  leagues,  at  most,  the  branches  which 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  43 

empty  into  it  are  only  known  to  the  natives.  It  makes  no  differ- 
ence what  name  they  have  at  present,  being  in  a  country  little  fre- 
quented. The  best  known  of  them  is  the  Osage,  which  takes  its 
name  from  a  nation  which  dwells  on  its  banks.  It  empties  into 
the  Missouri  river  near  its  mouth.  The  largest  known  river,  which 
falls  into  the  Missouri,  is  the  Canscs.  It  has  nearly  200  leagues 
course  through  a  beautiful  country.  From  what  I  have  been  able 
to  learn  of  the  course  of  the  Missouri  it  flows  from  its  source  to 
the  Canzes  river  from  west  to  east;  there  it  makes  a  great  elbow 
which  ends  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Missouries  (village  of  the 
Missouries)  when  it  retakes  its  course  toward  the  southeast.  Then 
it  loses  its  name  and  waters  in  the  River  St.  Louis. 

"The  waters  of  this  river  of  the  Missouries  are  always  thick 
and  muddy,  and  it  seems  that  its  source  is  not  far  from  the  place, 
where  on  the  map  of  Die  Lisle,  they  make  Fort  Dauphin  on  the 
Sea  of  the  West." 

NOTE  i. — Du  Pratz  lived  in  New  Orleans,  then  the  capital 
of  all  Louisiana,  and  was  never  up  the  Missouri  river.  Neverthe- 
less, the  description  he  gives  of  the  river,  distances,  etc. — the  in- 
formation of  which  he  had  doubtless  obtained  from  the  voyageurs 
—was  approximately  correct.  The  map  which  he  published  at  the 
time  was  a  valuable  contribution  to  the  geographical  knowledge 
of  the  West,  and  on  it  are  laid  down  the  village  of  the  Missouries 
and  old  Fort  Orleans,  at  the  exact  spot  where  Charlevoix  had 
located  them  35  years  before. 

NOTE  2. — The  author  says  the  Missouri  had  not  then  been 
ascended  for  more  than  300  leagues,  or  about  825  miles.  He  prob- 
ably meant  the  mouth  of  the  Platte,  for  that  was  as  high  as  the 
fur-traders  were  accustomed  to  go  in  that  day,  and  was  considered 
the  dividing  line  between  the  upper  and  lower  river.  The  dis- 
tance is  about  650  miles,  or  175  miles  less  than  Du  Pratz  esti- 
mated it.  He  estimates  the  length  of  the  entire  river  at  800 


44  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

leagues  or  2,200  miles.     The  actual  distance  from  its  head — the 
mouth  of  the  Gallatin  river— to  its  mouth  is  2546  miles. 

NOTE  3. — The  courses  of  the  river,  as  stated,  are  correct.  The 
"elbows"  at  the  mouth  of  the  Kaw  and  at  the  mouth  of  Grand 
river — the  latter  being  "in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Missouries" 
are  correctly  described. 

NOTE  4. — The  author  expresses  the  belief  that  the  river  "has 
its  source  not  far  from  where,  on  the  map  of  De  Lisle,  they  make 
(lay  down)  Fort  Dauphin  on  the  Sea  of  the  West."  He  probably 
did  not  know  how  close  he  came  to  guessing  the  truth.  In  1738 
Le  Sieur  De  Verendrye — an  employe  of  the  Hudson  Bay  company 
— came  down  from  the  British  possessions  to  the  Missouri  river 
which  he  crossed  at  the  Mandan  village,  near  where  Bismarck,  N. 
D.,  is  now  located.  After  going  westward  and  spending  a  year  or 
two  with  the  Rocky  Mountain  Indians,  he  returned  to  the  As- 
siniboine  country,  and  in  1740,  established  on  Lake  Manitoba  a 
post,  which  he  called  "Fort  Dauphin."  This  fort,  which  was  not 
more  than  250  miles  from  the  nearest  point  on  the  Missouri  river, 
was  the  one  referred  to,  and  the  "Sea  of  the  West"  was  Lake 
Manitoba. 

To  Verendrye  belongs  the  honor  of  having  been  the  first 
white  man  to  visit  the  upper  Missouri  country,  and  to  give  to 
the  world  the  first  information  of  that  vast  unexplored  domain. 
The  result  of  his  exploration  was  far-reaching,  for  it  is  probable 
that  the  journal  of  his  travels — published  after  his  return  to 
Canada — was  the  awakening  cause  which  impressed  on  Mr.  Jeffer- 
son the  importance  of  the  acquisition  of  that  valuable  territory  by 
the  United  States. 

The  tenacity  with  which  Mr.  Jefferson  clung  to  that  idea, 
and  the  persistency  with  which  he  followed  it  up,  are  matters  of 
history.  He  induced  John  Ledyard,  in  1785,  to  "seek  the  West  by 
way  of  the  East,"  and  pointed  out  to  him  the  road  to  the  Pacific 
coast  through  Russia  and  Behring  Strait.  Again,  in  1792,  he 
made  an  effort  to  secure  by  private  subscription  a  sufficient  sum 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  4T> 

of  money  to  equip  and  send  an  expedition  across  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains by  way  of  the  Missouri  river.  Both  of  these  attempts  failed; 
but  when  he  became  President  of  the  United  States  he  did  not  lose 
sight  of  his  favorite  project,  but  hastened,  with  a  far-seeing  wis- 
dom, to  consummate  with  Napoleon  the  fortunate  land  deal  known 
as  the  "Louisiana  Purchase."  This  masterly  stroke  of  statesman- 
ship fixed  the  destiny  of  this  country,  and  resulted  in  placing  it 
among  the  first  powers  of  the  world. 

PHILIP  PITMAN— 1770. 

In  a  book  entitled  "The  Present  State  of  European  Settle- 
ments on  the  Mississippi,"  published  by  Philip  Pitman,  in  1770, 
it  is  said : 

"The  source  of  the  Missouri  river  is  unknown.  The  French 
traders  go  betwixt  three  hundred  and  four  hundred  leagues  up  to 
traffic  with  the  Indians,  who  inhabit  near  its  banks.  From  its 
confluence  with  the  Mississippi  to  its  source  is  supposed  to  be  eight 
hundred  leagues." 

NOTE — A  hundred  years  had  passed  since  Marquette's  discov- 
ery of  the  Missouri  river  and  yet  its  source  was  unknown.  The 
French  voyageitrs  had  ascended  the  river  as  high  up  as  the  mouth 
of  the  Platte,  or  perhaps  to  the  Mandan  village,  but  beyond,  noth- 
ing was  known.  The  time  had  now  come,  however,  when  the 
searchlight  of  a  new  race — the  Anglo-Saxon — was  to  be  turned  on 
the  dark  recesses  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  the  Indian  Myths  of 
the  "South  Sea,"  the  "Vermillion  Sea,"  the  "Southeast  Passage 
to  China,"  the  "Great  Lakes  of  the  West,"  the  "Spanish  Mines," 
and  the  "Ridge  of  Hills,  passable  by  horse,  foot  or  wagon  in  half 
a  day,"  were  all  to  be  exploded. 

In  1792  that  intrepid  explorer,  Sir  Alexander  MacKenzie,  the 
first  to  cross  the  continent — blazed  a  path  over  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains, floated  down  Fraser  river  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  and  gave 


46  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

to  the  world  the  first  intimation  of  the  magnitude  and  grandeur  of 
the  Northwest.  In  1804  Lewis  and  Clark,  who  followed  MacKen- 
zie,  traced  the  great  river  beyond  Yellowstone  Park  and  found 
the  spring  from  which  it  flows — the  fountain  head — on  the  great 
divide.  From  these  discoveries  a  correct  map  of  the  country  was 
produced:  its  topography  and  geographical  dimensions  were  made 
known;  and  its  wonderful  possibilities,  as  a  home  for  civilized  man, 
foretold.  These  reports  showed  that  the  Missouri  river,  including 
the  lower  Mississippi,  was  the  longest  river  in  the  world;  that  the 
Missouri  valley  was  the  most  fertile  agricultural  region  in  the 
world;  that  it  was  the  largest  body  of  tillable  land  in  the  world; 
and  finally,  that  the  Louisiana  Purchase  was  the  most  profitable 
real  estate  investment  that  had  ever  been  made  in  the  world. 

The  purchase  of  Louisiana  was  the  realization  of  the  cherished 
dream  of  Thomas  Jefferson.  With  the  far-seeing  wrisdom  for 
which  he  was  distinguished,  he  probably  foresaw  more  clearly  than 
any  man  of  his  day  the  great  possibilities  that  would  result  to  his 
country  from  the  acquisition  of  this  immense  and  valuable  domain. 
In  his  message  to  Congress  in  October,  1803,  urging  the  Speedy 
ratification  of  the  treaty  with  France,  he  said :  "The  fertility  of  the 
country;  its  climate  and  extent;  promise,  in  due  season,  important 
aids  to  our  treasury,  ample  provision  for  our  posterity,  and  a  wide- 
spread for  the  blessings  of  freedom  and  equal  laws." 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  47 


EARLY  NAVIGATION  ON  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER,* 


It  is  not  known  positively  in  what  year  the  first  white  man 
entered  the  Missouri  river,  but  it  was  probably  between  1700  and 
1705.  The  account  given  by  La  Houtan  of  his  voyage  in  1699,% 
is  not  worthy  of  credence,  and  it  is  even  doubtful  if  Le  Seur  came 
up  in  1705.  There  can  be  no  question,  however,  that  about  this 
time  the  lower  part  of  the  river,  as  far  up  as  the  mouth  of  the 
Kaw,  was  first  explored  by  the  French. 

In  the  "Gazatteer  of  the  State  of  Missouri,"  published  in 
St.  Louis,  in  1837,  the  following  reference  is  made  to  the  early 
navigation  of  the  Missouri  river: 

"The  French  then,  in  1705,  ascended  the  Missouri  as  far 
as  the  Kansas  river,  the  point  where  the  western  boundary  line 
of  Missouri  now  strikes  the  river.  The  Indians  there  cheerfully 
engaged  in  trade  with  them,  and  all  the  tribes  on  the  Missouri, 
with  the  exception  of  the  Blackfeet  and  Arikaras,  have  since  gen- 
erally continued  on  friendly  terms  with  the  whites.  It  should  be 
observed  that  the  French,  traders  have  always  been  more  fortu- 
nate in  their  intercourse  with  the  Indians  than  those  of  other  na- 
tions." 

In  1705  Nicholas  de  La  Salle  proposed  an  expedition  of  one 
hundred  men  to  explore  the  mysterious  river,  in  which  great  in- 


*Among-  the  different  authorities  which  have  been  consulted  in  the 
preparation  of  this  paper  on  the  navigation  of  the  Missouri  rver,  are  "Lloyd's 
Steamboat  Directory,"  "Chittenden's  Missouri  River  Navigation"  and  "Gould's 
Fifty  Years  on  the  Mississippi." 


48  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

terest  had  now  become  awakened;  but  no  account  has  been  found 
of  the  result  of  this  enterprise.  About  the  same  time  one  Hubert — 
a  French  Canadian,  who  had  doubtless  been  up  the  river — laid  be- 
fore the  marines  of  Canada  a  proposition  to  explore  the  river  to 
its  source.  He  said:  "Not  only  may  we  find  the  mines  worked 
by  the  Spaniards,  but  the  river  flowing  to  the  west."  He  advised 
'  the  use  of  wooden  canoes. 

THE  COURIERS-DE-BOIS. 

As  early  as  1700  it  was  reported  that  there  were  not  less 
than  one  hundred  Courier s-de-bois,  or  trappers,  domiciled  among 
the  different  tribes  along  the  Missouri  river.  The  Conrier-de-bois 
was  a  type  of  the  earliest  pioneer,  now  long  since  extinct.  He 
was  a  French-Canadian,  probably  a  half-breed,  and  in  his  habits 
was  blended  the  innocent  simplicity  of  the  fun-loving  French- 
man and  the  wild  traits  and  woodcraft  of  the  Indian.  Born  in 
the  woods,  he  was  accustomed  from  childhood  to  the  hardships 
and  exposure  of  a  wild  life  in  the  wilderness,  and  was  a  skillful 
hunter  and  trapper.  His  free-and-easy  going  manners,  peaceable 
disposition  and  vivacity,  qualified  him  for  association  with  the 
Indian,  and  he  adopted  his  customs,  married  into  the  tribe,  and 
himself  became  a  savage. 

It  was  this  roving  vagabond  who,  as  he  wandered  up  and  down 
the  Missouri  river,  gave  the  poetic  and^  musical  French  names  to 
its  tributaries  and  prominent  localities  which  they  bear  to  this 
day;  such  as  the  Marias-Des-Cygnes  (River  of  the  Swans),  Creve- 
Ceur  (Broken  Heart),  Cote-sans-des-sein  (A  hill  without  a  Cause), 
Petite-sas  (Little  Tribe),  Roche-Perce  (Split  Rock),  now  called 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  49 

Rocheport;  Bonne- Femme  (Good  Woman),  now  called  "Bone- 
fam";  Terre-Beau  (Beautiful  Earth)  now  called  "Tabo";  Aux 
Vasse  (Blue  Mud),  Gasconade  (Turbulent),  La  Mine  (The 
Mine),  Pomme-de-Terre  (Fruit  of  the  Earth),  now  called  Pom-de- 
Tar;  Moreau  (Black)  and  Niangue  (Crooked). 

But  while  the  Coureur-de-bois,  the  feather-bedecked  wanderer, 
has  forever  disappeared,  he  will  not  be  forgotten,  for 

"He  has  left  his  names  behind  him, 

Adding  rich  barbaric  grace 
To  the  mountains,  to  the  rivers, 

To  the  fertile  meadow-place ; 
Relics  of  the  ancient  hunter 

Of  a  past  and  vanished  race." 

It  is  true  that  many  of  the  most  beautiful  of  these  early  French 
names  have  become  so  corrupted,  in  their  anglicization,  as  to  have 
lost  all  semblance  to  their  original  meaning.  When  Lewis  and 
Clark  came  up  the  river  a  hunter  killed  a  bear  at  the  mouth  of  the 
creek,  not  far  above  St.  Charles.  Very  naturally  they  called  the 
creek  "Bear  Creek."  The  French  hunter  called  the  place  "L'Our's 
Creek," — "L'Our's"  being  the  French  name  for  bear.  Soon  there- 
after the  long-haired  Tennessean  came  along,  and  not  knowing  the 
meaning  of  "L'  Oou'r"  called  it  "Loose  Creek,"  and  it  is  so  laid 
down  on  the  maps  today.  Another  instance  of  the  corruption  of 
a  beautiful  French  name  occurs  just  below  the  Osage.  An  early 
French  hunter,  in  passing  through  the  country,  gave  the  name 
"Bois-Brule"  to  a  certain  creek.  The  words  mean  "Burnt  Woods," 
and  it  was  probably  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  woods  had  re- 
cently been  burned  over  that  the  name  was  applied.  The  creek  is 
now  called  the  "Bob  Ruly." 


50  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  RIVER  IN  THE  PAST. 

During  the  entire  Eighteenth  century  the  navigation  of  the 
Missouri  river  was  confined  to  the  wooden  canoe,  and  its  commerce 
— such  as  it  was — was  limited  to  the  primitive  fur-trade.  The 
trader,  or  trapper,  ascended  the  river  singly  or  in  pairs,  and  after 
spending  the  winter  with  some  favorite  tribe  returned  in  the  spring 
with  his  perogue  well  loaded  with  furs,  which  he  disposed  of  in 
St.  Louis.  Then,  after  a  protracted  debauch,  he  went  to  the  priest, 
was  granted  absolution  from,  his  sins,  and  returned  to  the  wilder- 
ness.* 

It  is  not  probable  that  these  early  voyageurs  ascended  the 
river  higher  than  the  Platte,  for  neither  De  la  Verendrye,  who 
came  over  from  the  Hudson  Bay  Company's  posts,  in  1738,  to  the 
Missouri  river  at  the  Mandan  village,  where  Bismarck  is  now 
located,  Mallett  Brothers,  who  ascended  the  Platte  in  1739,  nor 
Alexander  Henry,  who  followed  them,  mention  having  met  them. 
It  is  very  certain,  however,  that  at  the  time  St.  Louis  was  founded 
(1764)  the  fur  trade  on  the  Missouri  had  attracted  the  attention 
of  the  French,  and  the  lower  part  of  the  river,  at  least,  must  have 
been  well  known.  Indeed,  the  charter  granted  Laclede  Liguest  and 
his  associates,  by  the  Governor  of  Louisiana,  gave  them  the  ex- 
clusive right  to  trade  on  the  Missouri  river.  But  little  is  known, 
however,  of  the  navigation  of  the  river  during  the  Eighteenth  cen- 
tury. The  French  voyageur  was  an  illiterate  half-savage  crea- 
ture and  could  neither  read  nor  write;  hence  no  record  of  his  early 
voyages  was  preserved.  Doubtless  he  continued  to  paddle  his  canoe 


•Lewis  and  Clark  met  a  number  of  these  half-savage  adventurers,  com- 
ing down  stream  in  their  canoes,  ladened  with  furs,  as  they  ascended  the 
river  in  the  spring  of  1804. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  51 

up  and  down  the  river,  gradually  increasing  his  trade,  extending 
his  voyages  higher  up  the  river  and  becoming  better  acquainted 
with  its  tortuous  channel. 

To  Manuel  Lisa,*  a  Spaniard  of  St.  Louis,  is  generally  ac- 
corded the  honor  of  being  the  father  of  navigation  on  the  Missouri 
river,  although  tradition  divides  that  honor  with  one  Gregoire 
Sarpy,  who  is  said  to  have  been  the  first  to  introduce  the  keel- 
boat.  As  early  as  1785  Lisa  and  Auguste  Choteau  became  associ- 
ated together  in  trading  up  the  Osage  river  with  the  Osage  Indians, 
who  were  then  seated  on  that  river  in  what  is  now  Bates  County, 
Missouri.  They  transported  their  merchandise  up  the  Missouri 
in  perogues  to  the  mouth  of  the  Osage  and  then  up  that  stream 
to  the  Indian  villages.  The  Choteaus  continued  to  trade  with  the 
Osages  for  many  years  and  gained  a  wonderful  influence  over  the 
tribe.  Indeed,  they  intermarried  with  them,  and  there  are  descend- 
ants of  this  well  known  family — bearing  the  family  name — now 
living  with  the  tribe  in  the  Indian  Territory  after  a  period  of 
1 20  years.  It  was  not  unusual  at  an  early  day  for  traders  to  marry 
Indian  wives,  and  there  is  more  than  one  wealthy  and  aristocratic 
family  in  St.  Louis  who  have  blood-relations  living  in  the  Terri- 
tory who  wear  the  blanket. 

For  a  hundred  years  the  history  of  the  Missouri  river  has 
been  the  history  of  the  country  through  which  it  flows,  and  its 
influence  on  the  development  of  the  country  cannot  now  be  nnder- 


*Manuel  Lisa  was  not  only  the  father  of  navigation  on  the  Missouri 
river,  but  the  pioneer  fur-trader  on  that  stream.  As  early  as  1800  he  was 
granted  the  exclusive  right,  by  the  Spanish  Government,  to  trade  with 
the  Osage  Indians.  He  made  thirteen  trips  to  the  Rocky  Mountains  in  keel- 
boats,  traveling  not  less  than  26,000  miles,  or  a  greater  distance  than  around 
the  earth.  He  died  in  1820,  and  his  ashes,  over  which  a  monument  was 
erected,  rest  in  old  Bellefontain  Cemetery,  in  St.  Louis. 


52  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

stood.  On  its  dark  bosom  the  Indian  paddled  his  canoe  for  cen- 
turies before  the  advent  of  the  white  man.*  Then  came  the  French 
voyageur  with  his  perogue,  his  batteau,  his  keel-boat  and  his  mack- 
inaw  boat,  without  which  the  fur  trade — the  principal  commerce 
in  that  day — could  not  have  attained  the  proportions  it  did  attain. 
At  last  came  the  steamboat,  the  most  wonderful  invention  of  the 
Nineteenth  century. 

For  half  a  century  the  Missouri  river  was  the  great  thorough- 
fare from  the  East  to  the  West,  and  on  its  bosom  floated  the  travel 
and  commerce  of  the  trans-Mississippi  section.  No  one  can  now 
appreciate  its  importance  in  the  past.  Capitals  of  states  were  lo- 
cated on  its  banks  that  they  might  be  accessible.  Settlements  were 
made  with  a  view  to  transporting  the  products  of  the  farm  to 
market  on  its  waters,  and  military  posts  were  established  that  sup- 
plies by  the  river  route  might  be  easily  furnished. 

THE    BOTTOMS— HOW    FORMED— THE    BENDS    AND 
THE  CROSSINGS. 

Perhaps  there  is  not  in  the  world  a  more  difficult  stream  to 
navigate  than  the  Missouri  river.  The  French-Canadian,  Hubert, 
was  right,  when  in  his  report  to  his  government,  in  1705,  he  said 
the  birch-bark  canoe  could  not  be  used  to  navigate  its  waters.  The 
condition  of  the  river  has  not  changed;  and  it  is  the  same  turbulent, 
muddy,  crooked  and  treacherous  stream  today  that  it  was  when  first 
seen  by  this  adventurous  Frenchman  -200  years  ago.  But  it  has 
served  its  purpose  well. 


*When,  in  1541,  Francis  Vasques  Coronado  came  into  Kansas  on  his 
famous  expedition  in  search  of  Quivira,  the  Indians  told  him  of  a  large 
river  "which  flowed  over  toward  where  the  sun  came  from."  "They  said 
that  the  river  (which  was  the  Missouri)  was  more  than  a  league  wide  and 
that  there  were  many  canoes  on  it."  (See  Winship's  translation  of  Coronado, 
Chap.  XIX) 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  53 

The  greatest  difficulty  encountered,  in  navigating  the  river, 
was  caused  by  constant  changes  in  the  shifting  of  the  channel. 
From  the  mouth  of  the  Platte  to  the  Mississippi  on  each  side  of 
the  river  are  bluffs  which  parallel  each  other  at  an  average  distance 
of  two  miles.  The  channel,  except  during  a  flood,  is  confined  to 
from;  one-fourth  to  one-half  this  distance,  leaving  the  remainder 
bottom  land.  This  bottom,  which  is  alluvial  soil,  originally  cov- 
ered with  a  primeval  forest,  furnishes  a  leeway  for  the  channel. 
It  is  "made  land,"  caused  from  accretions,  and  the  river  has  never 
relinquished  its  title  to  it.  It  may  have  been  thousands  of  years 
in  forming,  but  sooner  or  later  the  channel  will  go  back  to  its 
original  bed  and  claim  its  own.  When  the  channel  of  the  river 
changes  it  leaves  a  sandbar,  which  soon  becomes  overgrown  with 
willows  and  young  cottonwoods.  These  catch  and  retain  the  silt 
of  subsequent  overflows,  which  continually  raises  the  surface  of 
the  accretion,  until,  together  with  decaying  vegetation,  it  becomes 
as  high  as  the  adjacent  land.  This  process  goes  on  for  centuries, 
and  in  this  way  the  bottom  lands  along  the  Missouri  river  have 
been  formed. 

Surveys  made  along  the  lower  river  during  the  Spanish 
regime,  and  even  during  the  early  part  of  the  last  century,  substan- 
tiate the  correctness  of  this  theory;  but  if 'further  evidence  is  re- 
quired let  a  hole  be  bored  down  anywhere  in  the  river  bottom 
—a  mile  or  more  from  the  present  bed  of  the  river — and  it  is 
probable  that  at  a  distance  of  about  twenty-five  feet,  or  when  the 
level  of  the  water  in  the  river  is  reached,  a  rack-heap,  or  an  old 
log,  will  be  struck,  that  has  lain  there,  imbedded  in  the  clay  soil 


51  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

for  centuries;  thus  proving  conclusively  that  the  channel  of  the 
river  at  one  time  flowed  there.* 

The  most  dangerous  localities  on  the  river  were  the  bends,  and 
it  was  in  them  that  most  of  the  accidents  occurred  to  the  steamboats. 
They  were  formed  in  the  following  manner:  The  main  channel 
of  the  river  is  disposed  to  follow  the  bluff  shore,  and  does  so  until 
it  meets  with  some  obstruction.  A  trifling  object,  such  as  a  rack- 
heap,  or  an  old  steamboat  wreck,  will  sometimes  deflect  the  cur- 
rent and  send  it  off  obliquely  to  the  opposite  shore.  As  the  land 
where  it  strikes  is,  as  has  been  stated,  underlaid  with  a  stratum 
of  white  sand,  it  melts  before  the  strong  current  as  a  snowbank  be- 
fore the  noonday's  sun.  This  undermining  process  goes  on  at 
every  rise,  until  in  the  course  of  a  few  years  a  great  bend  is 
formed;  thousands  of  acres  of  land  are  swept  away;  and  the 
channel  of  the  river  is  a  mile  or  more  away  from  where  it  formerly 
ran. 

Some  of  these  bends  are  as  much  as  twenty  miles  long  and  have 
been  many  years  in  forming.  The  land  along  the  shore  was  origin- 
ally covered  with  a  dense  growth  of  large  timber — cottonwood, 
elm,  walnut,  etc.  As  the  banks  were  undermined  these  immense 
trees  tumbled  into  the  channel  and  floated  along  with  the  current 


*In  1858  the  town  of  Brunswick,  Mo.,  was  situated  on  the  bank  of  the 
Missouri  river  and  was  the  shipping  point  for  all  the  Grand  river  country. 
It  is  now  an  inland  town  and  the  river  flows  five  miles  away.  In  189<> 
a  farmer  was  digging  a  well  in  the  river  bottom,  near  the  town,  where 
the  river  formerly  ran.  A  Bible  was  found  in  the  excavation,  and  on 
its  cover  was  the  name,  "Naomi."  The  book  was  sent  to  some  of  the  old 
steamboat  men  in  St.  Louis,  to  see  if  they  could  suggest  any  explanation 
at  its  strange  presence  where  found.  It  was  distinctly  recalled  by  Capt. 
Jo  La  Barge,  and  others  of  the  old  steamboat  men,  that  the  steamer 
"Naomi"  was  wrecked  at  that  identical  spot  in  1840.  It  was  the  custom  of 
the  missionary  societies  to  present  to  each  boat,  when  she  came  out,  a  Bible, 
which  was  attached  to  the  table  in  the  ladies'  cabin  by  a  small  brass  chain.  On 
the  back  of  the  book  was  lettered  the  name  of  the  boat. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  55 

until  their  roots — the  heaviest  part — after  dragging  awhile  became 
anchored  in  the  bottom  of  the  river.  There  they  remained  for 
years,  some  extending  above  the  surface  of  the  water  and  others 
beneath  and  out  of  sight.  The  former,  from  being  continuously  in 
motion,  caused  by  the  swift  current,  were  called  "sawyers."  From 
the  velocity  of  the  current,  and  the  innumerable  snags,  the  bends 
were  a  continued  menace  to  steamboats,  and  no  pilot  approached 
one,  especially  at  night,  without  trepidation  and  fear. 

Each  bend  had  its  own  name,  sometimes  derived  from  the 
name  of  a  planter,  who  lived  nearby,  or  from  some  steamboat, 
which  had  been  previously  wrecked  there.  Among  the  former 
were  "Murray's,"  "Howard's,"  "Wolfs,"  "Penn's,"  and  "Pitman's 
Bend."  Among  the  later  were  "Malta  Bend,"  "Diana,"  "Ber- 
trand,"  "Alert,"  and  "Sultan  Bend."  Among  the  most  noted  lo- 
calities on  the  river,  noted  because  they  were  the  most  dangerous 
and  contained  the  greatest  number  of  wrecks,  were  Brickhouse 
Bend,  Bonne-homme  Bend,  Augusta  Bend  and  Osage  Chute.  Many 
a  magnificent  steamer  was  wrecked  in  them,  and  with  them  the 
fortunes  of  their  owners.  Each  is  today  a  marine  graveyard. 
There  were  other  bends  which  bore  euphonious  names,  such  as 
"Nigger  Bend,"  and  "Jackass  Bend,"  and  a  good  story  could  be 
told  as  to  how  the  latter  received  its  name,  if  space  permitted. 

Where  the  current  changed  from  one  side  of  the  river  to  the 
other  were  called  "crossings,"  and  it  was  there  that  the  greatest 
difficulty  was  encountered  by  the  navigator;  although,  as  there 
were  no  snags  in  such  places,  there  were  no  disasters.  The  water 
spreads  out  over  a  large  space  at  these  crossings,  and  instead  of 
one  main  channel  there  are  many  chutes,  neither  of  which,  in  a 


56  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

low  stage  of  water,  was  deep  enough  to  float  a  boat  heavily  loaded. 
The  boats  ran  aground,  in  low  water,  in  these  crossings,  and  fre- 
quently were  several  days  in  geting  over  the  bar.  In  such  cases 
the  spars  were  resorted  to.  They  were  two  long  poles,  one  on  each 
side  of  the  bow  of  the  boat,  attached  to  the  capstan  by  tackle.  They 
were  thrown  overboard,  and  by  means  of  pushing  on  them  the 
vessel  was  virtually  lifted  over  the  bar  as  with  a  pair  of  stilts.  It 
was  no  unusual  sight,  in  the  palmy  days  of  steamboating,  to  see  as 
many  as  a  half  dozen  fine  steamers  aground  on  a  crossing  within 
a  short  distance  of  each  other.  It  was  push  and  pull,  spar  and 
warp,  back  and  go  ahead,  night  and  day,  without  a  moment's  cessa- 
tion until  the  boat  was  safely  over  the  bar.  The  jingling  of  the 
bells,  the  hissing  of  steam,  together  with  the  swearing  of  the 
mate,  rendered  it  an  animated  and  interesting  scene  to  the  passenger, 
as  he  stood  on  the  hurricane  deck  and  looked  on,  but  it  was  terrible 
on  the  crew. 

CRAFT  USED  ON  THE  RIVER  BEFORE  THE  DAYS  OF 
THE  STEAMBOAT. 

The  craft  in  use  in  navigating  the  Missouri  river  before  the 
advent  of  the  steamboat  were  the  canoe,  theperogue,  the  batteau, 
the  keelboat,  the  mackinaw  boat  and  the  bullboat. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  describe  the  canoe,  as  its  universal  use, 
today,  has  rendered  it  a  familiar  object.  The  birch-bark  canoe,  so 
often  seen  on  the  northern  lakes,  was  not  adapted  to  the  Missouri 
on  account  of  its  frail  construction;  and  besides,  the  birch  tree,  from 
which  the  bark  was  taken,  is  not  found  on  the  river.  The  craft 
universally  used  was  the  cottonwood  canoe,  or  "dug-out,"  made 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  57 

from  a  log  fifteen  to  twenty-five  feet  long  and  three  or  four  feet 
in  diameter.  The  cottonwood  grows  along  the  river  everywhere, 
and  such  logs  were  easily  procured.  This  canoe  possessed  the  re- 
quisites of  strength,  lightness  of  draft  and  durability,  and  was  not 
only  the  primitive  craft  of  the  French  voyagenr,  but  had  been  in 
use  by  the  Indian  from  time  immemorial. 

The  perogue  was  another  craft  used  by  the  French  in  the  fur 
trade,  to  which  it  was  especially  adapted.  It  was  really  a  double 
canoe,  built  in  the  shape  of  a  flat-iron,  with  a  sharp  bow  and  a 
square  stern.  Two  canoes  were  securely  fastened  together  a  short 
distance  apart,  the  whole  being  decked  over  with  plank  or  punch- 
eons. On  the  floor  was  placed  the  cargo,  which  was  protected  from 
the  weather  by  skins.  The  boat  was  propelled  upstream  by  oars  or 
a  line,  and  steered  by  an  oarsman,  who  stood  on  the  stern.  A 
square  sail  was  also  resorted  to,  going  upstream,  when  the  wind 
was  in  the  right  quarter,  and  a  distance  of  from  ten  to  fifteen 
miles  per  day  could  be  made  under  favorable  conditions.  Such 
boats  were  usually  from  thirty  to  forty  feet  long  and  from  six 
to  eight  feet  beam,  and  being  of  light  draft  were  good  carriers. 
They  were  much  safer  than  the  canoe,  as  from  breadth  of  beam  they 
could  not  be  upset.* 

The  batteau,  as  its  name  indicates,  was  still  another  craft  em- 
ployed by  the  early  French  fur-trader.  It  was  a  flat-bottomed, 
clumsily  constructed  boat,  especially  adapted  to  transporting  a 
cargo  of  furs  down  stream,  and  did  not  differ  materially  from  the 
flat-bottomed  boat.  It  was  usually  50  to  75  feet  long  and 


*When  Lewis   and   Clark   ascended   the   Missouri   river   in   1804   their   fleet 
consisted   of  one   keelboat  and  two  perogues. 


58  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

10  to  12  feet  beam.  The  gunwales  were  hewn  from  cottonwood 
logs,  and  the  bottom  was  spiked  on  to  stringers  running  lengthwise 
the  boat.  The  bow  and  stern  were  square,  with  a  sufficient  rake 
to  prevent  impeding  headway.  The  oar,  the  pole,  the  line  and 
the  sail  were  the  appliances  relied  upon  for  motive  power  in  as- 
cending the  stream,  but  in  going  down  the  boat  was  allowed  to 
float  with  the  current,  being  kept  in  the  channel  by  the  steers- 
man. 

A  very  unique  craft  in  use,  from  1810  to  1830,  on  the  upper 
tributaries  of  the  Missouri — the  Platte,  the  Yellowstone  and  the 
Niobrara — by  the  fur-trader,  was  the  bullboat.  It  was  especially 
adapted  to  the  navigation  of  these  streams  on  account  of  its  ex- 
treme lightness  of  draft.  Indeed,  the  excessive  shallowness  of  the 
water  in  these  streams — which  rarely  exceded  12  inches — precluded 
navigation  by  any  other  boat.  It  was  probably  the  lightest  draft 
boat  ever  constructed  for  its  size,  but  could  carry  a  cargo  of  from 
5, cxx)  to  6,000  pounds. 

The  framework  of  the  bullboat  was  constructed  of  willow 
poles,  25  or  30  feet  long,  laid  lengthwise;  and  across  these  other 
poles  were  laid.  All  were  then  securely  fastened  together  with 
raw-hide  thongs.  Along  the  tops  of  the  vertical  portions  of  the 
frame-work,  on  the  inside,  was  then  lashed  stout  poles  like  those 
forming  the  bottom  of  the  boat,  which  served  as  gunwales.  To 
these  gunwales  were  lashed  cross  poles,  to  prevent  the  former 
from  spreading.  Not  a  nail  was  used  in  the  entire  structure,  all 
fastenings  being  secured  with  rawhide  thongs.  The  frame,  so 
constructed,  was  then  covered  with  buffalo  hides  sewed  together 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  59 

with  sinews,  the  seams  being  pitched  with  a  cement  made  of  buffalo- 
tallow  and  ashes. 

A  similarly  constructed  boat,  to  the  one  described  above,  al- 
though much  smaller  and  of  a  different  shape,  was  in  use  on  the 
Upper  Missouri  by  the  Mandan  Indians  when  they  were  first  vis- 
ited by  the  Hudson  Bay  traders,  about  1790.  This  boat  was  about 
the  size  and  shape  of  a  washtub,  and  one  buffalo  hide  was  suffi- 
cient to  cover  it.  It  could  safely  carry  one  person. 

THE  KEELBOAT. 

The  return  of  Lewis  and  Clark  from  the  Rocky  mountains, 
in  1806,  and  the  wonderful  account  they  brought  back  of  the  im- 
mense number  of  beaver  and  other  fur-bearing  animals  found  in 
that  country,  at  once  gave  a  new  impetus  to  the  fur  trade.  Com- 
panies were  formed  in  St.  Louis  of  the  most  enterprising  merchants 
who  invested  sufficient  capital  to  prosecute  the  trade  with  intelli- 
gence and  vigor.  The  most  skillful  and  experienced  boatmen  were 
employed  to  command  the  boats,  which  were  destined  for  the  mouth 
of  the  Yellowstone.  The  distance  was  nearly  2,000  miles  against 
a  strong  current,  and  much  of  the  route  lay  through  a  country 
inhabited  by  fierce  and  warlike  tribes.  The  voyage  was  one  of 
great  labor,  hardship  and  danger,  and  only  the  most  suitable  and 
best  equipped  craft  that  could  be  devised  would  answer  the  pur- 
pose of  such  a  venture.  The  keelboat  was  destined  to  supply  this 
want.  It  was  the  steamboat  without  steam  as  a  motive  power. 

The  keelboat  was  usually  from  50  to  75  feet  long  and  15  to  20 
feet  beam.  The  keelson  extended  from  stem  to  stern,  and  it  was 
a  staunch  vessel,  well  modeled,  sharp  bow  and  stern,  and  built  by 


60  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

skillful  workmen  after  the  most  approved  methods  of  shipcraft 
of  that  day.  Such  a  boat  had  a  carrying  capacity  of  ten  to  twenty 
tons,  a  draft  of  thirty  inches  light,  and  cost,  usually  from  $2,000 
to  $3,000.  Amidship  was  the  cabin,  extending  four  or  five  feet 
above  the  hull,  in  which  was  stored  the  cargo  of  Indian  merchan- 
dise. On  each  side  of  this  cabin  was  a  narrow  walk,  called  by  the 
French  "passe-a-vant,"  on  which  the  boatmen  walked  in  pushing 
the  boat  along  with  poles.  The  appliances  used  for  ascending  the 
river,  were  the  cordelle,  thr  pole,  the  oar  and  the  sail. 

The  cordclle,  however,  was  the  main  reliance.  It  was  a  line 
sometimes  300  yards  long,  which  was  fastened  to  the  top  of  a 
mast  extending  from  the  center  of  the  boat.  The  boat  was  pulled 
along  by  this  line  by  a  long  string  of  from  twenty  to  thirty  men, 
who  walked  along  the  shore.  When  an  obstacle  was  encountered, 
which  prevented  the  men  from  walking  along  the  bank,  the  line 
was  made  fast  to  some  object  on  shore,  and  she  was  pulled  up 
by  pulling  on  the  line.  This  process  was  called  "warping."  There 
were  shallow  places  along  the  river  where  it  became  necessary  to 
use  the  pole,  and  in  such  places  they  were  resorted  to.  The  oars 
came  into  use  in  making  crossings,  when  it  became  necessary  to 
cross  from  one  side  of  the  river  to  the  other,  as  it  frequently  did. 

The  crew  of  a  keelboat,  in  the  fur-trade — called  a  "brigade" — 
frequently  consisted  of  as  many  as  a  hundred  men,  although  this 
number  included  many  hunters  and  trappers,  en  route  to  the  moun- 
tains, who  were  not  regular  boatmen.  They  went  well  armed,  and 
every  boat  carried  on  her  bow  a  small  cannon,  called  a  "swivel." 
The  captain  of  the  boat,  called  the  "patron"  did  the  steering,  and 
his  assistant,  called  the  "bosseman"  stood  on  the  bow,  pole  in  hand, 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  01 

and  gave  directions  to  the  men  on  the  cordelle.  It  was  necessary 
that  these  officers  should  be  men  of  great  energy,  physical  strength 
and  personal  courage.  The  sail  was  seldom  used,  except  in  the 
upper  river,  where  the  absence  of  timber  rendered  the  wind  avail- 
able. 

It  required  nearly  the  entire  boating  season  to  make  a  trip 
to  the  Yellowstone,  and  as  may  well  be  imagined  the  labor  was 
most  arduous.  If  a  distance  of  fifteen  miles  a  day  was  made  it 
was  considered  a  good  day's  work.  It  was  push  and  pull,  through 
rain  and  storm,  from  daylight  to  dark ;  and  it  is  exceedingly  doubt- 
ful if  men  could  be  hired  at  any  price  at  this  day  to  perform  such 
laborious  work.  The  rations  furnished  consisted  of  pork  and 
beans  and  lye-hominy,  and  from  this  allowance  the  pork  was 
cut  off  when  game  could  be  procured  by  the  hunters.  There  was 
no  coffee  and  no  bread. 

The  boatmen  employed  on  these  voyages  were  French  Cana- 
dians, or  Creoles,  and  many  of  them  were  off-shoots  from  the 
Courieur—de-bois.  They  were  in  some  respects  different  from  their 
progenitors,  for  they  were  a  hard-working,  obedient,  cheerful 
class,  and  were  happy  and  contented  under  the  most  discouraging 
circumstances.  They  constituted  a  peculiar  and  interesting  type 
of  pioneer  life  on  the  Missouri  river,  now,  like  the  woodsmen, 
entirely  extinct.  Many  of  the  sons  of  these  early  voyageurs —  the 
La  Barges,  the  Fectos,  the  Guerettes,  the  Dripps,  and  others,  be- 
came pilots  on  the  first  steamboats  on  the  river,  and  their  sons, 
following  the  occupation  of  their  fathers,  stood  their  "trick  at 
the  wheel,"  as  long  as  there  was  a  steamboat  on  the  river. 


62  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

A  KEELBOAT  RACE. 

In  the  spring  of  1811  there  occurred  on  the  Missouri  river 
the  strangest  race  ever  run  on  any  river  in  the  West.  It  was  a 
race  between  two  keelboats  from  St.  Louis  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Yellowstone,  a  distance  of  1,790  miles. 

John  Jacob  Astor  was  then  preparing  to  establish  his  trad- 
ing post — Astoria — at  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  river,  and  in 
addition  to  an  expedition  sent  by  sea,  around  Cape  Horn,  had 
projected  another  up  the  Missouri  river  to  cross  over  the  moun- 
tains and  join  them'  on  the  Pacific.  The  latter  was  to  be  under 
the  command  of  Wilson  Price  Hunt — a  partner  of  Astor's.  Hunt 
wintered  on  the  Missouri  river  at  the  mouth  of  a  small  stream 
called  the  Nodaway,  a  little  above  the  site  of  St.  Joseph,  Mo.,  and 
set  off  up  the  river  early  in  March.  M'anuel  Lisa,  the  pioneer 
fur-trader — who  has  been  referred  to,  and  who,  in  1807,  took  the 
first  keelboat  up  the  Missouri,  and  also  built  the  first  house  in  what 
is  now  Montana — was  in  command  of  a  boat  belonging  to  an 
opposition  company. 

It  was  important  that  Lisa  should  reach  the  tribe  of  In- 
dians on  the  upper  river — with  whom  he  proposed  to  trade — ahead 
of  Hunt.  He  left  St.  Louis  on  April  2nd,  1811 — a  month  behind 
Hunt — but  by  great  exertion  overtook  him  on  June  nth,  after 
traveling  1,100  miles,  or  about  half  the  distance  to  the  Yellow- 
stone. He  therefore  made  1,100  miles  in  61  days,  an  average  of 
1 8  miles  per  day.  The  voyage  was  considered  a  most  remarkable 
one  and  the  time  was  never  beaten  on  the  Missouri  river  by  a 
keelboat.  The  race,  which  continued  on  up  the  river,  resulted 
in  bad  feling  between  the  patrons  and  crews  of  the  rival  boats, 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  63 

which  finally  terminated,  further  up  the  river,  in  treachery  and 
a  bloody  tragedy.     But  that  is  another  story. 

It  is  impossible,  in  this  age  of  steam  and  electricity,  for  any- 
one, unacquainted  with  the  character  of  the  Missouri  river,  to 
comprehend  the  difficulties  of  such  a  voyage  as  these  boats  made  in 
1811.  At  the  break  of  day  the  horn  of  the  patron  called  the  men 
to  the  cordelle,  and  from  that  time  till  dark  they  tugged  along 
the  shore  where  the  foot  of  a  white  man  had  never  trod  before. 
Half  bent,  in  water,  over  rocks,  and  through  brambles  and  brush, 
they  pulled  against  the  swift  current  for  six  long  months,  until  at 
last  the  glistening  snow,  on  the  peaks  of  the  Rockies,  gave  as- 
surance that  they  were  approaching  their  journey's  end. 

THE  MACKINAW  BOAT. 

The  mackinaw  boat  was  made  entirely  of  cottonwood  plank 
about  two  inches  thick.  They  were  built  about  fifty  to  sixty  feet 
long  with  twelve  foot  beam,  and  had  a  flat  bottom.  The  gunwales 
arose  about  three  feet  above  the  water-line,  amidship,  and  increased 
in  height  toward  the  bow  and  stern.  In  the  bottom  of  the  boat 
were  stringers,  running  fore  and  aft,  and  to  these  were  spiked  the 
bottom  plank,  in  the  first  years  with  wooden  pins,  but  later  with 
iron  nails.  The  sides,  which  were  also  of  plank,  were  supported  • 
by  knees,  at  proper  distances.  The  keel  showed  a  rake  of  thirty 
inches,  fore  and  aft,  and  the  hold  had  a  depth  of  four  feet 
amidship  and  about  five  feet  on  the  bow  and  stern. 

In  the  middle  of  the  boat  was  a  space  partitioned  off  with 
bulkheads,  similar  to  the  cargo-box  of  the  keelboat,  which  has  been 
described.  In  this  was  stored  the  cargo  of  furs  (put  up  in  bales), 


64  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

which  extended  several  feet  above  the  gunwales.  The  entire  cargo, 
consisting  of  beaver  and  other  valuable  furs,  was  then  covered 
over  with  buffalo  skins  seucrely  fastened  to  the  gunwales  by 
cleats.  The  poop,  on  the  deck  of  which  the  steersman  stood,  was 
used  as  quarters  for  the  men.  The  voyage  was  always  made  on 
the  June  rise,  and  as  the  current  was  then  swift,  and  there  was 
no  danger  from  sandbars,  a  distance  of  100  miles  per  day  was 
made.  A  crew  of  five  men  was  all  that  was  necessary,  as  the 
boat  simply  floated  down  with  the  current.  The  only  danger  an- 
ticipated was  from  the  snags  in  the  bends  and  the  Indians,  and 
these  had  to  be  carefully  guarded  against.  For  mutual  protection 
the  mackinaw  boats  usually  went  down  in  fleets  of  from  6  to 
12,  but  it  was  not  unusual  for  a  single  boat  to  make  the  long  voy- 
age alone.  A  trip  down  the  Missouri  river,  was  to  the  moun- 
taineer, an  event  of  a  lifetime  and  one  never  forgotten.  They 
have  been  described  by  such  early  travelers  as  Catlin,  Hunt,  Wyeth, 
Brackenridge,  Lewis  and  Clark,  De  Smet  and  others. 

As  the  mackinaw  boat  was  only  intended  for  a  single  voyage 
down  the  river  they  were  cheaply  built.  There  was  near  every 
large  trading  post,  on  the  river,  a  boat-yard,  called  by  the  French 
.  a  chamtier,  where  the  lumber  was  gotten  out  and  the  boat  con- 
structed. There  were  no  saw-mills  in  the  upper  country  in  that 
day,  and  the  lumber  was  sawed  out  with  a  whipsaw.  It  was  a 
tedious  process,  but  answered  the  purpose. 

In  the  spring  of  1845,  as  a  barefooted  boy,  the  writer  stood 
on  the  bank  of  the  Missouri,  opposite  Jefferson  City,  Mb.,  and 
saw  what  was  probably  the  last  mackinaw  boat  pass  clown  and  out 
of  the  river.  There  were  ten  or  twelve  boats  in  the  fleet,  and  as 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  r>r> 

they  passed,  at  intervals  of  half  an  hour  or  more,  they  were  all 
the  morning  in  view.  It  was  the  last  of  this  primitive  mode  of  navi- 
gation and  marked  the  end  of  the  fur-trade  on  the  Missouri  river. 
The  steamboat  had  supplanted  the  keelboat,  in  the  upper  river 
fur-trade,  in  1832,  but  it  never  supplanted  the  mackinaw  boat  while 
the  trade  continued,  for  that  craft  furnished  the  cheapest  trans- 
portation— in  this  particular  trade — for  down  stream  navigation, 
ever  devised. 

THE  RISE  AND  FALL  OF  STEAMBOATING. 

In  following  down  the  evolution  that  has  taken  place  in  the 
navigation  of  the  Missouri  river  we  come  at  last  to  the  steamboat 
— the  par  excellence  of  all  water  craft  on  Western  rivers. 

The  new  craft  came  none  too  soon  to  supply  the  rapidly  in- 
creasing demand  for  transportation  in  the  West;  and  it  is  a  re- 
markable coincidence  that  the  same  year — 1807 — in  which  the  first 
Anglo-American  settlement  was  made  on  the  Missouri  witnessed 
the  successful  application  of  steam,  as.  a  motive  power,  on  the 
Hudson.  The  settlement  of  the  country  along  the  Missouri  river 
was  greatly  retarded,  for  several  years  after  the  Louisiana  pur- 
chase, by  continual  conflicts  with  the  Indians;  and  it  was  not 

V        '  : 

until  after  the  War  of  1812,  when  they  were  driven  out  of  the 
country  and  peace  reigned,  that  immigration  from  the  older 
states  began  to  flow  into  the  new  territory.  Previous  to  the  ad- 
vent of  these  pioneers,  the  perogue,  the  batteau  and  the  keelboat  had 
been  sufficient  to  supply  the  limited  wants  of  the  fur-trader,  but 
the  time  had  now  come,  with  the  change  of  government,  the  arrival 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon,  and  the.  rapid  advancement  of  civilization, 


66  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

when  better  facilities  were  demanded  by  the  growing  commerce 
of  the  West.  The  surplus  products  of  the  alluvial  soil  must  find 
transportation  to  the  markets  of  the  world.  Without  such  facilities 
the  settlement  of  the  country  would  have  been  retarded  many 
years,  and  the  rapid  development  which  did  occur,  would  not  have 
been  witnessed.  The  steamboat  was  destined  to  supply  this  want, 
and  prove  the  great  factor,  not  only  in  the  development  of  the 
Mississippi  valley,  but  in  revolutionizing  the  commerce  of  the 
world. 

For  several  years,  foreseeing  the  urgent  need  of  additional 
transportation,  especially  on  inland  waters,  the  inventive  genius 
of  the  American  mind  had  been  engaged  in  an  endeavor  to  supply 
this  want  by  applying  steam  as  a  motive  power  to  river  craft.  As 

early  as   1737  Jonathan  Hulls — an  Englishman — had  made  some 

t 
experiments  along  this  line,   but  had  failed.     The   first  attempt 

made  in  this  country  was  by  James  Rumsey.  He  was  so  far  suc- 
cessful as  to  construct  a  boat,  in  1786,  which  he  propelled  on  the 
Potomac  river  at  the  rate  of  four  or  five  miles  an  hour;  but  the 
experiment,  for  some  reason,  proved  a  failure.  Others,  during  the 
same  period,  were  endeavoring  to  accomplish  the  same  object — 
Symington,  in  Scotland,  John  Stevens,  at  New  York,  and  Oliver 
Evans  at  Philadelphia.  Each  partially  succeeded,  but  all  failed, 
either  from  the  want  of  proper  facilities  for  manufacturing  the 
machinery,  from  a  proper  conception  of  the  application  of  the 
power  of  steam,  or  more  likely  from  the  want  of  sufficient  means 
to  advantageously  prosecute  their  experiments.  Without  an  excep- 
tion, having  exhausted  their  resources,  they  died  poor. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  67 

In  1786 — the  same  year  in  which  Rumsey  was  experimenting 
on  the  Potamac — John  Fitch,  a  Connecticut  Yankee,  was  making 
similar  experiments  on  the  Delaware;  and  was  so  far  successful 
that  in  1789  he  built  a  boat  that  ran  for  several  miles  on  that 
stream.  He,  however,  finally,  like  his  co-workers,  failed  for  want 
of  sufficient  means  to  carry  forward  his  efforts  to  a  successful 
termination.  He  died  a  pauper,  and  the  following  record,  found 
in  his  diary,  after  his  death,  is  pathetic.  He  said:  "The  day  will 
come  when  some  man,  more  fortunate  than  I,  will  get  fame  and 
riches  from  my  invention.  But  nobody  will  believe  that  poor  John 
Fitch  can  do  anything." 

The  dying  prediction  of  John  Fitch  proved  prophetic,  for 
twenty  years  after  his  death,  a  young  mechanical  genius  of  Phila- 
delphia— Robert  Fulton — came  into  possession  of  Fitch's  plans  and 
drawings,  and  with  the  financial  assistance  of  Chancellor  Livings- 
ton of  New  York,  who  became  associated  with  him,  carried  into 
practical  effect  the  ideas  and  plans  of  the  man  who  was,  in  fact, 
the  inventor  of  the  steamboat.  The  world  has  given  to  Fulton 
the  honor  which  justly  belongs  to  the  unfortunate  genius  whose 
ashes  repose  at  Bardstown,  Ky. ;  where  he  was  buried  on  the 
banks  of  the  Ohio.  He  requested  on  his  death-bed  that  he  might 
be  buried  there,  that,  as  he  said:  "The  future  traveler  on  that 
stream  may  point  to  my  grave  and  say,  'there  lies  the  man  who 
invented  the  steamboat'." 

It  was  in  August,  1807  that  the  Clermont — Fulton's  boat — 
made  her  first  successful  trip  on  the  Hudson;  and  from  that  day 
and  that  trip  steamboat  navigation  became  an  assured  fact  and 
the  trade  and  travel  of  the  world  entered  on  a  new  era. 


68  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

The  complete  success  attending  steam  navigation  on  the  Hud- 
son immediately  turned  the  attention  of  the  principal  projectors, 
and  others,  to  its  application  on  the  Western  rivers,  and  in  April, 
1809,  Nicholas  Roosevelt,  a  great-uncle  of  President  Roosevelt, 
who  had  become  associated  with  Fulton,  went  to  Pittsburg  and 
there  built  a  boat  called  the  "New  Orleans" 

The  history  of  this  boat — the  first  built  west  of  the  Alleghen- 
ies — is  interesting.  She  was  a  lubberly  craft,  138  feet  keel,  20  feet 
beam  and  had  a  measurement  of  370  tons.  She  had  an  upper  deck, 
a  small  cabin,  in  the  hold,  and  was  built  at  a  cost  of  $38,000.  Be- 
fore risking  his  boat  on  the  perilous  voyage  to  New  Orleans, 
Captain  Roosevelt,  the  principal  owner,  went  down  the  river  on  a 
flat-boat,  for  the  purpose  of  determining  if  his  steamboat  could 
stem  the  current  of  the  Mississippi.  The  voyage  required  six 
months,  and  it  was  not  until  the  loth  of  December,  1811,  that  the 
New  Orleans  cast  off  her  moorings  at  iPttsburg.  As  she  pro- 
ceeded down  the  river  her  appearance  created  a  mixture  of  fear 
and  surprise  among  the  settlers  along  the  banks,  many  of  whom 
had  never  heard  of  such  an  invention  as  a  steamboat.  The  vessel 
reached  Louisville,  a  distance  of  700  miles,  in  four  days,  and 
shot  the  Falls  under  a  full  head  of  steam.  She  passed  New  Madrid 
on  the  night  of  December  6th,  just  as  the  great  earthquake  oc- 
curred, the  most  astounding  convulsion  of  nature  ever  known  on 
this  continent.  Finally,  after  a  long  and  tedious  voyage,  she  ar- 
rived at  the*  city  of  New  Orleans,  and  there,  while  lying  at  the 
levee,  caught  fire  from  the  upsetting  of  a  stove  and  was  burned. 

While  other  boats,  of  crude  and  imperfect  construction,  fol- 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  69 

lowed  the  New  Orleans,  such  is  the  velocity  of  the  current  in  the 
Mississippi  that  it  was  not  until  1815  that  sufficient  improvement 
had  been  made  in  their  machinery  as  to  enable  them  to  overcome 
this  obstruction  to  navigation.  In  that  year  the  "Enterprise"  made 
the  first  successful  trip  up  the  river.  She  left  New  Orleans  on 
May  6th  and  arrived  at  Louisville  on  the  3ist,  making  the  voyage 
in  twenty-five  days;  a  remarkable  achievement  in  that  day. 

Owing  to  the  difficulty  that  has  been  referred  to — the  swift 
current  of  the  Mississippi — it  was  not  until  1817  that  any  steam- 
boat succeeded  in  ascending  that  stream  above  the  mouth  of  the 
Ohio.  On  August  2nd,  1817,  the  steamer  "Gen.  Pike" — a  side 
wheeler — came  up  the  river  and  landed  at  St.  Louis,  being  the 
first  steamboat  to  land  at  that  place.  Her  arrival  was  attended 
with  great  demonstrations  of  joy  among  the  inhabitants,  who 
justly  considered  the  event  as  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  the 
destinies  of  the  Mississippi  valley. 

THE  FIRST  STEAMBOAT  ON  THE  MISSOURI. 

It  was  not  until  1819  that  any  attempt  was  mae  to  navigate 
the  Missouri  river  by  steam.  The  voyctgeurs  and  traders  up  that 
stream  had  long  given  it  as  their  opinion  that  the  tortuous  channel, 
the  strong  current,  and  the  innumerable  snags  and  sandbars  would 
render  steam  navigation  impossible.  Such,  however,  were  the  in- 
creasing demands  of  commerce  that  Col.  Rector,  and  others,  of  St. 
Louis,  in  the  spring  of  that  year,  chartered  a  steamboat  called  the 
"Independence"  John  Nelson,  master,  to  make  a  voyage  to  Old 
Chariton,  the  name  of  a  town  then  located  near  the  town  of  Glas- 
gow, Mo.,  but  which  has  long  since  disappeared  from  the  maps. 


70  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

The  Independence  left  St.  Louis  May  I5th,  1819,  and  arrived  at 
Old  Franklin — another  abandoned  town— on  the  28th.  She  con- 
tinued her  voyage  to  Chariton  and  returned  to  St.  Louis  on  June 
5th.  It  was  a  slow  and  tedious  voyage,  but  it  solved  the  question 
of  navigating  the  Missouri  river  by  steamboat. 

During  June  of  the  same  year — 1819 — a  fleet  of  steamboats 
left  St.  Louis  on  a  voyage  up  the  Missouri  river  under  the  com- 
mand of  Major  Stephen  H  Long,  a  United  States  Army  officer. 
This  expedition,  which  was  partly  scientific  and  partly  military— 
the  troops  being  under  the  command  of  Gen.  Atkinson — is  known 
in  history  as  "Long's  Expedition."  He  was  instructed  to  proceed 
as  high  up  the  river  as  the  mouth  of  the  Yellowstone,  to  ascertain 
if  the  upper  river  could  be  navigated  by  steamboats,  and  also 
to  establish  military  posts.  It  was  intended  to  make  a  grand 
military  display,  and  thus,  by  overawing  the  Indians  on  the  upper 
river,  withdraw  them  from  the  influence  of  the  British,  who  were 
then  contending  for  the  fur  trade  in  that  region. 

The  names  of  the  four  steamboats  which  constituted  the  fleet 
were  "Thomas  Jefferson"  "R.  M.  Johnson"  "Expedition,"  and 
"Western  Engineer"  The  Jefferson  struck  a  snag  in  Osage  Chute, 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Osage,  and  sunk;  being  the  first  steamboat 
of  the  many  wrecked  on  the  Missouri  river.  The  Western  Engi- 
neer had  been  built  expressly  for  this  expedition,  and  from  her 
unique  construction  is  worthy  of  a  description.  She  was  a  small 
stern-wheeler,  being  perhaps  the  first  boat  of  that  kind  built. 
She  was  75  feet  long,  13  feet  beam  and  drew  twenty  inches  light. 
She  was  .intended  to  impress  the  Indians  with  awe,  and  there  is 
no  doubt  she  did  so.  On  her  bow,  running  from  her  ke'ls'n  for- 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  71 

ward,  was  the  escape  pipe,  made  in  imitation  of  a  huge  serpent — 
painted  black  and  its  mouth  and  tongue  painted  a  fiery  red.  The 
steam  escaped  from  the  mouth  of  the  serpent,  and  in  its  passage— 
at  intervals — created  a  loud  wheezing  noise,  or  puff,  like  the  dying 
groans  of  a  great  sea-monster.  The  noise  could  be  heard  for 
miles,  and  we  can  readily  imagine  that  the  Indian,  who  saw  this 

4 

wonderful  piece  of  marine  mechanism,  recognized  in  it  the  power 
of  the  Great  Maniteau.* 

The  Johnson,  the  Expedition,  and  the  Jefferson  left  St.  Loub 
on  June  5th,  1819;  the  Jefferson,  on  account  of  her  name,  being 
given  precedence,  was  the  first  to  enter  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri. 
After  many  delays,  caused  by  breaking  of  machinery,  the  two  first 
mentioned  boats  arrived  at  Cantonment  Martin*  on  Sept.  i8th. 
The  Western  Engineer  left  St.  Louis  on  June  7th,  arrived  at 
Franklin  on  the  24th,  where  she  laid  by  several  days.  She  then  pro- 
ceeded on  her  voyage,  and,  being  of  lighter  draft,  passed  the  other 
two  boats  and  arrived  at  the  same  destination  on  August  28th.  1 1 

On  their  arrival  at  Cow  Island  the  Expedition  and  Johnson 
tied  up,  and  the  troops  went  into  winter  quarters.  As  their  boats 
were  found  to  be  entirely  unfit  for  the  river  they  returned  to  St. 
Louis  in  the  spring.  The  Western  Engineer,  which  proved  to  be 
the  only  boat  of  the  fleet  at  all  adapted  to  the  navigation  of  the 
river,  although  she  could  only  make  three  miles  an  hour,  up 
stream,,  proceeded  up  the  river,  and  on  the  i/th  of  September  ar- 
rived at  Ft.  Lisa  (a  trading  post  established  by  Manuel  Lisa) 

*Cantonment  Martin — the  first  military  post  established  on  the  Missouri 
west  of  the  Kaw — was  located  on  an  island  just  below  Atchison,  Kas., 
called  by  the  French  "Isle  Au  Vache"  and  by  the  Americans  "Cow  Island." 

I!  Judg-e  W.  B.  Napton,  of  Marshall,  Mo.,  has  in  his  possession  a  great 
number  of  old  letters  written  by  Capt.  Martin,  Col.  John  O'Fallon,  Gen.  Atkinson 
and  other  officers  of  this  expedition,  at  different  points  on  the  river,  to 
Gen.  Smith,  thd  general  in  command  of  the  District,  who'  was  then  at 
Franklin.  From  this  correspondence  the  above  data  has  been  obtained. 


72  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

five  miles  below  Council  Bluff.  Here  she  also  went  into  winter 
quarters  and  returned  to  St.  Louis  in  the  following-  spring.  It 
having  become  apparent  that  the  marine  part  of  the  expedition 
was  an  unqualified  failure,  the  river  was  abandoned,  and  Major 
Long,  with  his  troops,  went  overland  to  the  Platte.  The  machinery 
of  the  boats  was  so  imperfectly  constructed  that  it  was  continually 
breaking,  and  besides,  the  boats,  excepting  the  Engineer,  were  so 
slow  and  drew  so  much  water,  that  but  little  headway  could  be 
made.*  To  the  little  Engineer,  however,  belongs  the  distinction  of 
being  the  first  steamboat  to  ascend  the  river  as  high  as  Council 
Bluffs. 

THE  STEAMBOAT  FROM  1820  TO  1850. 
From  the  sparsely  settled  condition  of  the  country,  the  limited 
demand  for  transportation,  and  the  difficulties  of  navigation, 
there  were  but  few  steamboats  on  the  Missouri  river  previous  to 
1840.  Sidewheelers  were  the  favorites  then,  and  have  ever  been 
since,  as  they  were  more  easily  handled  in  a  swift,  crooked  channel 
among  snags.  The  .boats  in  use  during  this  period  were  heavy, 
clumsy  craft,  built  of  strong  timbers,  and  were  usually  from  100. 
to  130  feet  in  length,  20  to  30  feet  beam  and  6  to  7  feet  hold.  But 
little  attention  was  paid  to  the  model,  and  they  drew,  with  an  ordi- 
nary cargo,  from  5  to  6  feet.  They  carried  a  single  engine,  with 
one  or  two  boilers.  Of  course,  with  such  heavy  draft  and  imper- 
fect machinery,  the  progress  of  such  boats,  up  stream,  was  ex- 
ceedingly slow.  Indeed,  they  did  not  make  more  than  five  or 
six  miles  an  hour,  and  the  puffing  of  the  steam  from  their  escape 


•See  Niles   Register,  Vol.   XVI.     Also  Missouri   Intelligencer,   June,   1819. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  73 

pipes  could  be  heard  for  miles.  There  were  no  steam  whistles  in 
that  day,  they  were  not  invented  until  1844,  nor  were  they  needed 
on  these  primitive  boats. 

During  the  period  from  1820  to  1840  the  entire  traffic  ou 
the  lower  river  was  confined  to  the  small  towns,  the  Santa  Fe 
trade,  at  Westport  Landing  (now  Kansas  City),  and  the  govern- 
ment trade  at  Fort  Leavenworth.  As  early  as  1829  there  was 
a  regular  packet  between  St.  Louis  and  the  latter  place,  which  con- 
tinued in  the  trade  for  several  years.  There  were  no  settlements 
above  except  at  St.  Joseph  and  Council  Bluffs.  There  was  but 
little  travel  on  the  river  during  that  period,  and  the  modern  cabin 
was  not  adopted  until  1836.  Previous  to  that  time  the  only  ac- 
commodation for  passengers  and  crew  was  a  small  cabin  placed 
on  the  stern  of  the  boat  in  the  hull.  During  1831  there  were  only 
five  regular  boats  on  the  Missouri  river,  but  by  1836  the  number 
had  increased — so  rapidly  had  the  country  become  settled — to  15 
or  20,  which  made  35  round  trips  to  Boonville  and  Glasgow.* 

Among  these  pioneer  boats  were  the  following — the  "Naomi" 
"Mustang;'  "Tamerlane;'  "Halcyon;'  "Mandan,"  "Little  Red;' 
(the  sobriquet  of  U.  S.  Senator  Barton),  "Mary  Tompkins"  "To- 
bacco Plant,"  "Nodaway,"  "Far  West,"\\  "Amelia,"  "Corvette," 
"Anthony  Wayne"  "Falcon"  "Pirate"  "John  Hancock"  "Wa- 
pello,"  "Weston"  "Yucatan,"  "Whirhwnd"  "Undine"  and  "John 
Go  Long" 

The  name  of  the  last  mentioned  boat  is  so  peculiar,  and  the 


*Gazeteer   of   Missouri. 

((Several  of  these  boats  were  built  on  the  Missouri  river,  although  for 
the  most  part  they  were  built  at  Pittsburgh.  The  F^^est^^s  *lf  Jg® 
mouth  of  the  Bonne  Femme,  was  launched  Oct.  llth,  1834.  £  3  was  or  tne 
following  dimensions:  130  feet  long,  20  feet  beam  and  6  feet  hold.  She 
had  a  tonnage  of  200  tons. 


74  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

circumstances  under  which  she  was  named  so  strange,  that  it  may 
be  worth  mentioning.  A  gentleman  in  St.  Louis,  who  was  just 
about  completing  a  boat,  found  some  difficulty  in  selecting  a  name. 
He  had  a  friend  named  "John,"  who  was  in  the  habit  of  coming 
around  every  day,  and  in  a  teasing  manner,  suggesting  names. 
The  owner,  at  last,  becoming  annoyed  on  being  again  asked  what 
name  he  intended  giving  the  boat,  said,  "John,  go  long."  The 
name  was  suggestive,  and  when  the  boat  was  completed  she  bore 
on  her  wheelhouse  the  name  "John  Go  Long." 

About  1840,  the  rapidly  increasing  population  along  the  Mis- 
souri river  caused  a  corresponding  demand  for  additional  trans- 
portation facilities.  A  better  class  of  boats  were  built;  full  length 
cabins  were  adopted;  and1  double  engines,  with  a  battery  of  boilers; 
in  place  of  the  single  engine  one  boiler  "dingey."  Great  improve- 
ments were  also  made  in  the  model  of  the  hull,  and  they  were  so 
constructed  as  to  have  the  same  carrying  capacity  and  draw  much 
less  water.  The  same  inventive  genius  that  had  invented  the  steam- 
boat was  continually  making  improvements,  both  in  the  machinery 
and  hull,  so  as  to  add  to  the  speed  of  the  boat  and  also  increase 
her  carrying  capacity. 

During  the  year  1842  there  were  26  steamboats  engaged 
regularly  in  the  lower  river  trade.  They  were  a  much  better  class 
of  boats  than  were  formerly  built,  and  were  generally  from  140 
to  1 60  feet  long,  about  30  feet  beam,  with  a*6  foot  hold.  They 
had  full  length  cabins  and  side  wheels.  There  were  312  arrivals 
and  departures  from  Glasgow  (where  the  following  record  wras 
kept),  during  the  year,  and  the  latan — the  regular  Glasgow  packet 
— made  24  weekly  trips  from  St.  Louis.  During  the  season  4^,000 
tons  of  different  kinds  of  freight  were  transported.* 

*See  "Missouri  Intelligencer"  and  "Patriot." 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  75 

Among  the  names  of  the  boats  on  the  Missouri  river  in  1842 
were  the  following:  "Shawnee,"  "Emiline,"  "Col  Woods/'  "Gen. 
Leavenworth"  "Bowling  Green/'  "latan,"  "Platte"  "Thames," 
"Gen.  Brady;'  "Oceana,"  "Roebuck,"  "Manhattan"  "Malta" 
"Lehigh,"  "Osage  Valley,"  "Gloster,"  "Amazon,"  "Huntsville," 
"Lewis  F.  Linn,"  and  "Warsazv." 

THE  STEAMBOAT  IN  THE  FUR  TRADE. 

It  was  during  this  period  that  the  steamboat  superseded  the 
keelboat  in  the  upper  river  fur-trade.  This  trade  had  so  increased 
as  to  require  a  better  method  of  transportation,  and  besides,  such 
improvement  had  been  made  in  the  construction  of  the  steam- 
boats as  to  lead  the  fur  companies  to  believe  that  they  could  suc- 
cessfully be  used  in  navigating  the  upper  river  as  well  as  the  lower. 
In  1831,  Pierre  Chouteau,  who  was  then  at  the  head  of  the 
American  Fur  Company,  built  a  boat  called  the  "Yellowstone" 
intended  for  the  mountain  trade.  She  was  130  feet  long,  19  feet 
beam,  6  feet  hold;  good  model;  side  wheel;  single  engine,  two 
chimneys;  fly-wheel;  cabin  in  the  stern-hold;  boiler-deck  open;  no 
hurricane  roof;  pilot  house  elevated;  and  drew  6  feet  loaded  to  75 
tons.  The  Yellozvstone  left  St.  Louis  April  i6th,  1831,  on  her 
maiden  voyage,  and  arrived  at  the  mouth  of  Milk  river,  in  South 
Dakota,  on  June  iQth.  After  discharging  her  cargo  of  Indian 
goods  she  took  in  a  cargo  of  furs  and  buffalo  robes  and  returned 
to  St.  Louis,  where  she  arrived  July  i5th.  She  was  the  first 
boat  to  ascend  the  Missouri  river  above  Council  Bluffs. 

In  the  following  year — 1832 — the  Yellowstone  made  her  sec- 
ond trip  "to  the  mountains;"  as  the  old  river  men  always  called 


76  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

the  upper  M'issotiri.  This  will  be  ever  memorable  as  the  year  in 
which  the  cholera  first  made  its  appearance  in  the  United  States. 
The  terrible  scourge  followed  the  water  courses,  where  at  that  day 
the  population  dwelt,  and  in  proportion  to  the  inhabitants  was 

more  fatal  than  it  has  ever  been  since.     The  Yellowstone  did  not 

\ 

escape  the  plague.  She  left  St.  Louis  on  March  26th,  and  by  the 
time  she  arrived  at  the  mouth  of  the  Kaw  one-half  of  her  crew 
were  dead.  There  was  no  Kansas  City  there  then,  but  only  a  land- 
ing at  Choteau's  trading  post,  just  below  the  present  city.  While 
lying  there  eight  more  of  the  crew  died  the  first  night,  and  were 
buried  in  a  single  trench  on  a  sandbar.  It  being  impossible  to 
proceed  further  with  a  diminished  crew,  Capt.  Bennett — the  com- 
mander— manned  the  yawl  with  a  few  men,  and  returned  to  St. 
Louis  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  an  additional  crew.  During 
his  absence  the  boat  \vas  left  in  charge  of  Joseph  La  Barge,  then 
1 8  years  old,  who  was  just  beginning  his  long  career  of  more 
than  50  years  as  a  steamboatman  on  the  Missouri  river.  The 
scourge  soon  spread  among  the  few  inhabitants,  who  were  then 
living  near  the  landing,  and  created  such  an  alarm  that  they 
threatened  to  burn  the  boat.  La  Barge,  perceiving  the  danger, 
raised  steam  himself  during  the  night,  and  taking  the  wheel,  ran 
the  boat  above  the  mouth  of  the  Kaw,  where,  as  there  were  no 
inhabitants,  she  remained  undisturbed.  On  Capt.  Bennett's  return 
the  boat  proceeded  on  her  voyage  and  arrived  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Yellowstone  on  June  I7th.  On  her  return  she  arrived  at  St. 
Louis  on  July  7th.  She  was  the  first  steamboat  to  ascend  the 
Missouri  to  the  mouth  of  the  Yellowstone,  and  demonstrated  what 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  77 

Major  Long  had  attempted  to  establish,  that  the  upper  Missouri- 
was  navigable  by  steamboats  as  high  up  as  the  Yellowstone. 

It  was  the  custom  of  the  American  Fur  Company,  which  by 
1830  had  obtained  a  complete  monopoly  of  the  fur  trade,  to  send 
up  annually  to  the  mountains,  one  boat.  Occasionally  two  were 
despatched,  but  usually  one  was  sufficient  to  carry  up  the  supply 
of  goods.  These  voyages  were  always  attended  with  great  danger 
and  hardship  and  required  the  most  skillful  navigation.  The  lurk- 
ing savage,  as  he  lay  concealed  in  the  grass  on  the  banks  of  the 
river,  ready  to  fire  on  the  unsuspecting  boatmen,  was  a  continual 
menace,  and  many  a  brush  occurred  betwen  the  redman  and  his 
white  brother.  The  greatest  difficulty  encountered  in  navigating 
the  boats  was  from  the  scarcity  of  fuel.  There  were  no  settle- 
ments above  St.  Joseph  at  that  day,  and  above  the  Platte  there 
was  but  little  timber.  The  only  wood  to  be  obtained  was  from  the 
rack-heaps,  and  this,  being  drift-wood,  wet  and  sodden — would 
scarcely  make  steam  at  all.  But  it  was  the  only  dependence  for 
fuel,  and  while  half  the  crew  were  engaged  in  .cutting  wood,  the 
other  half  stood  guard,  muskets  in  hand,  to  protect  them  from 
a  surprise  by  the  Indians. 

There  were  other  difficulties  to  be  overcome  by  these  early 
navigators.  The  diminished  quantity  of  water  in  the  upper  river, 
and  the  narrowness  of  the  channel,  made  it  absolutely  essential 
that  the  trip  should  be  made  on  the  June  rise.  This  rise,  caused 
by  the  melting  of  snow  in  the  Rocky  Mountains,  begins  in  May 
and  continues  to  the  latter  part  of  July.  It  required  quick  work 
and  skillful  navigation  to  take  a  boat  from  St.  Louis  to  the  Yel- 


78  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

lowstone — a  distance  of  nearly  2,000  miles — and  back  before  the 
subsidence  of  the  annual  rise. 

During  the  period  from  1831  to  1846,  after  which  the  fur 
trade  ceased  to  exist,  the  navigation  of  the  upper  Missouri  was 
confined  almost  entirely  to  the  boats  belonging  to  the  American 
Fur  Company.  Among  these  boats  the  following  made  the  annual 
voyage  in  the  years  enclosed  in  brackets:  "Yellowstone"  (1831-2 
and  3),  "Assiniboine"  (1833)  "Diana"  (1834),  "Antelope" 
(1835),  "Trapper"  (1836),  "St.  Peters"  (1837),  "Elk"  (1838), 
"Platte"  (1839),  "Emelia"  (1840),  "Otter"  (1841),  "Shawnee" 
(1842),  "Omega"  (1843),  "Nimrod"  (1844),  and  "latan" 
(1845).  Other  boats  which  made  trips  to  the  mountains  during 
this  period,  some  of  which  belonged  to  opposition  companies,  were 
the  "Astoria,"  "Big  Horn,"  "Dacota,"  "Cheyenne;'  "St.  Croix," 
"St.  Ange,"  "St.  Anthony,"*  "A.  S.  Bennett,"  and  "W.  H.  Ash- 
ley." 

The  voyage  of  1843  was  made  by  the  Omega.  She  left  St. 
Louis  April  25th  and  the  following  incident,  taken  from  her  log, 
which  has  been  preserved,  furnishes  a  living  picture  of  the  dangers 
to  which  these  early  boatmen  were  exposed.  A  band  of  Indians, 
hidden  in  the  tall  grass,  opened  fire  on  the  boat  as  she  passed 
along  close  to  the  shore.  Capt.  La  Barge,  who  has  been  referred 
to,  was  at  the  wheel,  and  a  negro  called  "Black  Dave,"  who  stood 


*Many  of  the  early  steamboatmen,  on  the  Upper  Missouri,  were  French 
Catholics,  hence  we  find  the  names  of  their  patron  saints  given  to  their 
boats.  The  "Bennett"  was  named  for  the  first  commander  of  the  Yellow- 
stone. The  "W.  H.  Ashley"  for  Gen.  Ashley,  a  successful  fur  trader, 
Lieutenant  Governor  of  Missouri,  Brigadier  General  of  State  Militia,  Member 
of  Congress,  and  in  his  day  the  most  popular  man  in  Missouri.  His  remains 
are  interred  on  the  banks  of  the  Missouri  river,  near  the  mouth  of  the  Lamine 
river,  ten  miles  above  Boonville,  Mo.,  in  a  forgotten  and  an  unmarked  grave. 
Such  is  fame. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  79 

the  alternate  watch,  was  also  in  the  pilot  house.  Both  were  French- 
men, as  were  most  of  the  early  boatmen  on  the  upper  Missouri,  and 
Dave  could  scarcely  speak  the  English  language.  He  was  as  black 
as  the  ace  of  spades,  always  dressed  well — with  a  profusion  of 
jewelry — and  might  well  have  been  taken  for  the  King  of  Da- 
homey. Dave,  whose  real  name  was  Jacques  Desire,  had  but  one 
fault — his  timidity — caused  by  fear  of  the  Indians.  But  he  knew 
how  to  handle  a  wheel,  and  was  recognized  as  one  of  the  best 
upper  river  pilots  in  his  day.  When  the  bullets  crashed  through 
the  pilot  house,  shattering  the  glass,  Dave  deserted  the  wheel, 
ran  out  of  the  pilot  house,  and  took  refuge  behind  one  of  the 
chimneys,  where  he  remained  until  the  battle  was  over.  On  being 
reprimanded  for  his  cowardice,  in  deserting  his  post  in  time  of 
danger,  he  replied  that  it  was  not  from  fear  of  the  bullets,  but 
that  his  eyesight  was  all  he  had  to  depend  on  to  make  a  living, 
and  he  was  afraid  the  flying  pieces  of  glass  would  strike  him 
in  ,the  eyes  and  put  them  out. 

The  year  1846  saw  the  end  of  the  fur  trade  on  the  upper 
Missouri,  but  by  that  time  'the  government  had  established  military 
posts  in  that  section  and  a  few  straggling  settlements  had  sprung 
up.  The  supplies  necessary  for  these  posts  were  transported  up 
the  river  on  steamboats,  which  thus  supplanted  the  fur  company 
boats.  The  number,  however,  was  still  limited  to  one  or  two  a 
season.  The  principal  points,  above  Council  Bluffs,  during  this 
period,  were  Fort  Pierre,  Fort  Clark,  Milk  River,  La  Chapelle, 
Cheyenne,  Fort  Union,  Yankton,  Fort  Randall,  and  Fort  Benton.* 


*Ft.  Benton  was  the  head  of  navigation  on  the  Missouri  river,  and  was 
in  the  da3^s  of  steamboating-  a  place  of  great  importance.  The  Yellowstone 
was  formerly  navigated  as  high  up  as  the  mouth  of  the  Rig  Horn. 


80  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

Many  of  these  places,  once  so  well  known,  have  since  been  wiped 
off  the  map. 

The  voyage  of  1844  was  made  by  the  Nimrod.  She  was  a 
new  boat,  built  by  the  American  Fur  Company,  and  her  log  of 
the  voyage,  like  that  of  others  during  this  period,  has  been  pre- 
served. This  was  the  year  of  the  great  flood  in  the  Missouri 
river,  the  greatest,  except  that  of  1903,  that  has  ever  occurred 
since  the  settlement  of  the  country.  When  the  Nimrod  arrived  at 
the  village  of  the  Maha  Indians,  a  short  distance  below 'the  pres- 
ent location  of  Sioux  City,  she  found  the  water  so  low  that  she 
was  compelled  to  tie  up  and  wait  for  a  rise.  After  a  delay  of  sev- 
eral days  she  proceded  on  her  voyage.  As  this  was  in  June,  it 
is  a  noteworthy  fact,  and  refutes  the  popular  impression  that  the 
overflows  of  the  Missouri  river  always  come  from  the  annual 
mountain  rise,  caused  by  the  melting  of  snow.  It  is  true  that  the 
melting  of  the  snow  in  the  mountains  serves  to  augment  the  flood, 
by  keeping  the  stage  of  the  water  high,  and  thus  becomes  an  im- 
portant factor  in  an  overflow,  but  no  great  flood  in  the  Missouri 
was  ever  caused  by  the  melting  of  the  snow  alone.  They  are 
invariably  accompanied  by  unusual  precipitation  in  the  vast  water- 
shed of  the  Kaw,  and  other  tributaries,  flowing  into  the  lower 
part  of  the  river,  just  as  the  annual  June  rise  reaches  that  part  of 
the  river;  which  is  about  the  first  of  June. 

THE  GOLDEN  ERA— 1850  TO   1860. 
In  the  history  of  steamboat  navigation  on  the  Missouri  river 
the  decade  between   1850  and  1860  may  be  properly  termed  tho 
"Golden  Era."     The  improvements  which  had  been  made,  both  in 


A  HISTORY  or  TTTE  MISSOURI   RIVKR.  81 

the  machinery  and  the  construction  of  the  hull,  the  adaptation  of 
the  stateroom  cabin,  and  the  systematizing  of  the  business,  all 
tended  to  lessen  the  danger,  of  navigation  and  increase  the  profits. 
The  advancement  made  in  navigation  on  the  Missouri  river  had 
kept  pace  with  the  march  of  commerce  in  other  parts  of  the  world. 

The  first  navigator  on  the  Missouri  river  was  the  little  blue- 
winged  teal  duck;  the  next  the  Indian,  with  his  canoe.  Then 
came  the  half-civilized  French-Canadian  voyageur  with  his  pcrogue, 
paddling  up  stream  or  cordclling  around  the  swift  points.  At  a 
later  day  came  the  fur  trader  with  his  keel-boat;  still  later  there 
came  up  from  below  the  little  "dingey" — the  single  engine  one  boiler 
steamboat — which  has  been  described.  At  last  the  evolution  was 
complete  and  there  came  the  magnificent  passenger  steamer  of 
the  '505 — the  floating  palace  of  the  palmy  days  of  steamboating — 
combining  in  her  construction  every  improvement  that  experience 
had  suggested,  or  the  ingenuity  of  man  had  devised,  to  increase 
the  speed  or  add  to  the  safety  and  comfort  of  the  passenger. 

The  fully  equipped  passenger  steamer,  in  the  hey-day  of  steam- 
boating  on  the  Missouri  river,  was  a  magnificent  specimen  of 
marine  architecture.  She  was  generally  about  250  feet  'long,  40 
feet  beam,  and  had  a  full  length  cabin  capable  of  accommodating 
from  300  to  400  people.  The  texas,  occupied  solely  by  the  officers, 
was  on  the  hurricane  roof.  In  addition  to  her  passenger  accommo- 
dation she  had  a  freight  capacity  of  from  500  to  700  tons.  She 
was  well  proportioned,  symmetrical,  trim,  fast  and  sat  on  the 
water  like  a  thing  of  life.  Her  two  tall  chimneys,  with  ornamental 
tops — between  which  was  usually  suspended  some  gilt  letter  or 
device — added  much  to  her  beauty.  The  pilot  house,  on  top  of  the 


82  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

texas,  was  highly  ornamented  with  glass  windows  on  every  side, 
a  fancy  railing  of  scroll-work  surrounded  the  guards  of  the  boiler 
deck  and  texas.  The  entire  boat,  excepting  the  chimneys,  was 
painted  a  dazzling  white. 

The  cabin  of  the  boat — a  long,  narrow  salon — was  a  marvel 
of  beauty  in  its  snow-white  splendor.  The  floors  of  the  cabin 
were  covered  with  the  softest  Brussels  carpets,  and  the  state- 
rooms were  supplied  with  every  convenience.  Indeed,  the  bridal 
chambers  were  perfect  gems  of  elegance  and  luxury.  The  table 
was  elegantly  furnished,  and  the  menu  unsurpassed  by  that  of  any 
first-class  hotel.  Each  boat  had,  in  the  ladies'  cabin,  a  piano,  and 
generally  a  brass  band  and  always  a  string  band  was  carried.  After 
the  table  was  cleared  away  at  night  a  dance  was  always  in  order, 
the  old  Virginia  reel  being  the  favorite  dance.  The  social  feature 
of  a  trip  on  one  of  these  elegant  boats  was  most  charming. 

The  machinery  and  boilers  of  the  boat  were  on  the  main 
deck.  The  latter,  consisting  of  a  battery  of  six  or  eight  cylinders, 
was  placed  over  a  huge  furnace.  The  machinery,  consisting  of 
two  ponderous  engines,  ran  as  smoothly  as  the  movements  of  a 
watch,  and  furnished  the  motive  power  to  turn  the  two  immense 
wheels,  one  on  either  side  of  the  boat.  The  cost  of  such  a  boat  as 
has  been  described,  was,  during  the  period  between  1850  and  1860, 
from  $50,000  to  $75,000. 

The  crew  of  a  first  class  passenger  steamer  consisted  of  a 
captain,  two  clerks,  two  pilots,  four  engineers,  two  mates,  a  watch- 
man, a  lamplighter,  a  porter,  a  carpenter  and  a  painter.  There 
were  besides  a  steward,  four  -cooks,  two  chambermaids,  a  deck 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  8-1 

crew  of  about  forty  men,  and  a  cabin  crew — generally  colored of 

about  twenty.  There  were  also  a  barber  and  a  barkeeper,  for  a  bar 
was  always  an  indispensable  attachment  to  a  first-class  steamboat. 
The  entire  crew  consisted  of  from  75  to  90  people. 

The  wages  paid  were  commensurate  with  the)  labor  \ancl 
danger,  as  well  as  the  profits  of  the  business.  Captains  received 
from  $250  to  $300  per  month,  clerks  from  $125  to  $250,  mates 
from  $100  to  $250,  engineers  about  the  same  as  mates.  Of  course, 
these  wages  included  board. 

It  was  the  pilot,  however,  who  divided  the  profits  with  the 
owner,  and  sometimes  received  the  larger  share.  He  was  the  auto- 
crat of  the  boat  and  absolutely  controlled  her  navigation.  It  was 
for  him  to  determine  when  the  boat  should  run  at  night  and  when 
she  should  lay  by.  He  received  princely  wages,  sometimes  as  mucH 
as  $1,000  or  $1,500  per  month,  and  he  spent  it  like  a  thoroughbred. 
These  exorbitant  wages  were  demanded  and  paid  as  a  result  of  a 
combination  among  the  pilots  called  the  "Pilots'  Benevolent  Asso- 
ciation." It  controlled  the  number  of  apprentices,  and,  as  no  man 
could  "learn  the  river,"  as  it  was  called,  without  "being  shown," 
it  absolutely  controlled  the  number  of  pilots.  It  had  a  "dead  sure 
cinch,"  and  in  compactness,  in  rigid  enforcement  of  rules,  and  in 
keeping  wages  at  high-water  mark,  it  was  a  complete  success, 
and  continued  to  maintain  its  organization  as  long  as  steamboating 
was  profitable. 

Piloting  on  the  Missouri  river  was  a  science,  and  the  skillful 
pilot  was  a  man  of  wonderful  memory  of  localities.  No  man, 
indeed,  ever  became  a  first-class  pilot  who  was  not  endowed  with 
this  peculiar  faculty.  He  was  required  to  know  the  river  through- 


84  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

out  his  entire  run  as  a  schoolboy  knows  the  path  to  the  school- 
house.  He  had  to  know  it  thoroughly,  upside  down,  endways,  in- 
side, outside,  and  crossways.  He  had  to  know  it  at  midnight  of  the 
darkest  night — when  called  on  watch — as  well  as  in  daylight.  He 
was  expected  to  know  every  sandbar,  every  crossing,  chute  ,tow- 
head  and  cutoff;  the  location  of  every  wreck  and  every  dangerous 
snag,  from  one  end  of  the  river  to  the  other.  He  had  also  to  be 
able  to  determine  the  location  of  the  boat  on  the  darkest  night 
from  the  reverbration  of  the  sound  of  the  whistle,  as  the  echo 
resounded  from  the  adjacent  bluffs.  He  was  expected  to  know 
every  landmark  on  the  shore,  the  location  of  every  cabin,  and  the 
peculiar  bark  of  every  squatter's  dog. 

THE  PILOT  AND  THE  DOG. 

On  one  occasion  a  pilot  attempted  to  make  a  crossing  near 
Hill's  Landing,  on  the  lower  river,  on  an  exceedingly  dark  night. 
He  missed  the  channel  and  ran  the  bow  of  the  boat  square  up 
against  a  bluff  sandbar.  On  being  scolded  by  the  captain,  he  ad- 
mitted that  he  could  not  recognize  a  single  landmark,  so  extreme 
was  the  darkness,  but  had  guided  the  boat  solely  by  the  familiar 
bark  of  a  dog,  wHich  belonged  to  a  wood-chopper  whose  cabin 
stood  near  the  head  of  the  crossing.  The  dog  was  accustomed 
to  come  out  on  the  bank  of  the  river,  whenever  a  boat  approached, 
and  saluting  it  vigorously,  by  barking,  until  it  had  passed.  Un- 
fortunately, on  this  particular  night,  the  dog  had  changed  his  posi- 
tion, and  was  farther  up  the  river  than  his  usual  location,  which  was 
in  front  of  his  owner's  cabin. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  8~> 

DIFFICULTIES   OF   NAVIGATION. 

As  has  been  stated,  the  dangerous  localities  on  the  Missouri 
river,  were  the  bends  on  account  of  the  snags,  and  it  was  in  them 
that  most  of  the  accidents  occurred.  Often  has  the  writer  stood  in 
the  pilot  house,  in  going  down  stream,  when,  on  looking  ahead  it 
seemed  impossible  to  find  a  space  sufficiently  wide  for  the  boat 
to  pass  between  the  snags.  Good  judgment,  a  keen,  quick  eye,  and 
an  iron  nerve  were  prerequisites  in  a  pilot;  for  there  were  times 
in  the  experience  of  every  one  when  a  miscalculation  as  to  the 
power  of  the  wind,  the  force  of  a  cross-current,  or  even  the  wrong 
turn  of  the  wheel,  would  have  sent  his  boat  to  the  bottom  of  the 
river.  It  was  the  custom,  in  running  such  dangerous  localities,  to 
straighten  the  boat  at  the  head  of  the  bend  and  then  "belt  her 
through/'  by  throwing  the  throttles  wide  open  and  pitting  on  every 
pound  of  steam.  Only  in  this  way  would  the  boat  respond  to  the 
rudder,  and  thus  prevent  flanking  on  the  dangerous  snap's. 

On  one  occasion,  on  a  down-stream  trip,  which  the  writer 
recalls,  there  were  two  pilots  on  the  boat — Capt.  "Bob"  Wright 
and  his  son-in-law,  Gates  McGarrah.  The  former  was  an  old,  ex- 
perienced pilot,  and  was  recognized  as  one  among  the  best  on  the 
river.  The  younger  man,  who  was  scarcely  of  age,  was  also  a 
skillful  pilot,  but  a  reckless,  nervy,  dare-devil.  It  was  Capt.  Wright's 
watch,  when  we  came  to  the  head  of  the  bend,  and  he  was  at  the 
wheel.  McGarrah  was  in  the  texas  asleep.  The  old  man  was 
generally  cool  and  collected,  but  on  this  occasion,  as  the  boat  was 
heavily  loaded  and  full  of  people,  he  seemed  to  realize  his  respon- 
sibility. His  hands  trembled  like  a  leaf  and,  as  I  watched  him,  I 
saw  that  he  had  lost  his  nerve.  The  boat  was  held  back,  and  he 


86  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

sent  for  McGarrah.  The  young  fellow  came  running  into  the  pilot 
house,  laughing  and  whistling,  took  the  wheel,  and  putting  on  a 
full  head  of  steam  ran  through  the  snags  without  a  scratch. 

Such  was  the  amount  of  business  done  on  the  river  during  the 
'505,  and  such  the  skill  of  the  pilots,  that  boats  in  the  lower  trade 
ran  day  and  night.  No  night  ever  became  so  dark  as  to  render  it 
necessary  for  the  boat  to  tie  up,  especially  in  going  up  stream.  A 
speed  of  ten  miles  an  hour,  up  stream,  was  not  unusual,  and  a 
distance  of,  150  miles  was  made  down  stream  in  a  day.  In  July, 
1856,  the  James  H.  Lucas,  one  of  the  fastest  boats  on  the  river, 
ran  from  St.  Louis  to  St.  Joseph,  a  distance  of  600  miles,  in  sixty 
hours  and  fifty-seven  minutes.  In  1853  the  Polar  Star,  another 
remarkably  fast  boat,  and  a  great  favorite,  made  the  same  run  in 
sixty  hours.  When  the  difficulty  of  navigating  the  river,  the 
swiftness  of  the  current,  and  the  crookedness  of  the  channel,  are 
considered,  the  time  made  by  these  boats  is  remarkable,  and  shows 
what  was  accomplished,  in  the  way  of  speed,  in  the  hey-day  of 
steamboating  on  the  Missouri. 

From  the  peculiar  character  of  the  Missouri  river,  and  the 
many  obstacles  to  navigation,  racing  was  never  practiced  on  that 
stream  as  it  was  on  the  lower  Mississippi.  As  in  the  case  of  the 
Lucas  and  the  Polar  Star,  a  particularly  fast  boat  would  sometimes 
make  a  run  against  time — the  wager  being  a  large  pair  of  gilded 
elk  -horns,  which  were  carried  by  the  successful  boat  until  some 
other  beat  her  time.  But  racing  was  risky  in  any  case,  especially  on 
the  Missouri,  for  the  temptation  always  existed  to  increase  the  pres- 
sure of  steam  above  the  safety  limit.  Of  all  the  disasters  that  ever- 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  87 

occurred  on  the  river  the  most  terrible  were  those  caused  by  boiler 
explosions. 

The  next  most  fatal  cause  of  accidents  on  the  Missouri,  after 
snags  and  sunken  wrecks,  was  fire.  The  cabins  of  the  boats  were 
constructed  of  white  pine,  as  light  as  they  could  be  built,  and 
were  thoroughly  saturated  with  lead  and  oil.  Constructed  of  such 
combustible  material,  when  once  on  fire  the  flames  could  not  be 
extinguished,  and  the  vessel  burned  with  such  rapidity  as  often  to 
cause  the  loss  of  life. 

Accidents  from  explosions  of  boilers  were  frequent  in  the 
early  days  of  steamboating  on  the  river,  and  the  fatality  in  some 
cases  was  appalling.  The  boat  always  caught  fire  after  the  ex- 
plosion, and  those  who  escaped  immediate  death  were  confronted 
by  the  flames.  The  improvement  in  the  material  and  construction 
of  the  boilers,  however,  and  the  more  rigid  enforcement  of  the  in- 
spection laws,  by  the  government,  tended  to  materially  decrease 
the  number  of  disasters  from  this  cause  in  the  last  years  of  steam- 
boating. 

THE  EXPLOSION  OF  THE  SALUDA. 
The  most  terrible  disaster  that  ever  occurred  on  the  Missouri 
river  was  that  of  the  explosion  of  the  Saluda  at  Lexington,  Mo., 
in  1852.  The  Saluda  was  a  side- wheel  steamer  with  a  battery  of 
two  boilers,  and  was  on  her  way  up  the  river  with  her  cabin  and 
lower  deck  crowded  with  passengers,  the  most  of  whom  were 
Mormons.  The  river  was  unusually  high  and  the  current  at  that 
place  exceedingly  swift.  Capt.  Francis  P.  Belt,  the  commander 
of  the  boat,  had  made  repeated  efforts  to  stem  the  current,  but  hav- 
ing failed  fell  back  to  the  levee.  At  last,  on  the  morning  of  April 


88  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

9th,  after  waiting  several  days  for  the  flood  to  subside,  he  again 
ordered  steam  raised  for  a  final  effort.  He  went  to  the  engine  room, 
and  looking  up  at  the  steamgauge,  asked  the  engineer  how  much 
more  pressure  she  could  stand.  On  being  answered  that  she  had 
already  every  pound  of  steam  that  it  was  safe  to  carry,  he  said : 
"Fill  her  up.  Put  on  more  steam,"  and  remarked  to  the  engineer 
that  he  would  "round  the  point  or  blow  her  to  H — 1."  He  then 
returned  to  the  hurricane  roof,  rang  the  bell,  and  gave  the 'order 
to  "cast  loose  the  line." 

The  bow  of  the  boat  swung, gently  out  into  the  stream  and 
was  caught  by  the  current.  The  engine  made  but  one  revolution; 
then  came  the  terrible  crash!  and  all  was  chaos,  darkness  and 
death.  The  number  of  those  who  lost  their  lives  was  never  known. 
About  one  hundred  bodies  were  recovered,  and  it  was  supposed 
that  there  were  as  many  more  victims  whose  bodies  were  blown 
into  the  river  and  never  recovered.  Nearly  all  of  the  officers  of 
the  boat  were  killed,  among  them  Capt.  Belt.  He  was  at  his  post, 
on  the  hurricane  roof,  standing  with  his  arm  resting  on  the  bell, 
when  the  explosion  occurred,  and  was  blown  high  up  on  the  bank. 
His  body,  when  found,  was  a  mangled  mass  of  flesh  and  bones. 
The  bell,  which  had  just  sounded  the  death-knell  of  so  many  souls, 
was  sold  with  the  wreckage  to  an  old  German,  who  afterward  sold 
it  to  the  Christian  church,  at  Savannah,  Mo.,  where  it  has  hung 
in  the  belfry  for  more  than  half  a  century.  On  any  Sabbath  morn- 
ing its  clear  silvery  peals  can  be  heard,  but  it  is  doubtful  if  there 
is  one  among  all  those  who  are  called  to  the  house  of  God,  who 
knows  anything  of  its  tragic  history. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  RD 

A  partial  list  of  boats  wrecked  on  the  Missouri  river  has  been 
preserved,  with  the  names  of  the  captains  and  owners,  the  date 
and  place  where  wrecked,  the  cause,  and  many  other  particulars.  It 
contains  the  names  of  300  boats,  but  is  not  complete,  as  no  regu- 
lar record  was  kept  of  the  number.  193  were  sunk  by  coming  in 
contact  with  snags;  25  by  fire,  and  the  remainder  by  explosions, 
rocks,  bridges,  storms  and  ice.  More  than  three- fourths  of  the 
number  were  wrecked  between  Kansas  City  and  the  mouth  of  the 
river,  as  most  of  the  boats  ran  in  the  lower  trade.  In  fact,  that 
part  of  the  river  is  a  marine  grave-yard,  and  there  lie  buried  in  the 
bends  the  wrecks  of  more  than  200  steamboats,  covered  with  the 
accumulated  sands  of  half  a  century. 

GAMBLING  ON  THE  RIVER. 

Marvelous  tales  of  gambling  on  the  river,  in  old  times,  have 
been  told,  and  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  many  of  these  stories  have 
not  been  exaggerated.  There  were  'boats  on  which  gambling  was 
permitted,  and  it  was  not  unusual  for  a  professional  gambler  to 
travel  on  a  boat  and  run  his  game  openly  and  above-board.  Indeed, 
there  were  certain  boats  on  which  it  was,  said  the  captain  or  clerk 
"stood  in"  with  the  gambler,  and  shared  his  nefarious  profits.  I 
never  saw  a  planter  bet  his  negro  servant  on  a  game  of  cards — 
that  is  said  to  have  occurred  on  the  lower  Mississippi — but  I  have 
witnessed  scenes  equally  as  pathetic  and  sad.  I  have  seen  men, 
after  losing  their  last  dollar,  take  their  watches  and  jewelry  and 
cast  them  into  the  jackpot.  Poker  was  the  game  universally  played 
on  the  river — big  games  they  were,  too — and  the  excitement  fan 
high,  as  the  passengers  crowded  around  the  table,  in  the  cabin, 
on  which  the  gold  and  silver  were  stacked  up. 


90  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

The  steamer  John  D.  Perry  left  St.  Louis  one  evening,  in 
July,  1858,  with  her  cabin  crowded  with  passengers.  Among  the 
number  was  an  old  gentleman — a  farmer  from  a  lower  river  county 
—who  had  gone  down  on  the  previous  trip  with  his  crop  of  hemp, 
which  he  had  sold.  The  writer  was  clerk  of  the  boat,  and  just  as 
the  lines  were  cast  off  the  old  gentleman  came  to  the  office  and 
handed  me  a  well-filled  pocketbook,  which  he  requested  me  to 
place  in  the  safe.  About  9  o'clock  that  night,  after  the  boat  had 
gotten  several  miles  above  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri,  he  came  to 
the  office  again  and  requested  me  to  return  him  his  pocketbook.  I 
did  so;  and  being  busily  engaged  at  the  time  did  not  give  the  mat- 
ter any  further  attention.  It  soon  occurred  to  me,  however,  that 
it  was  strange  that  he  should  want  his  money  at  that  time  of  night, 
and  I  walked  back  in  the  cabin  to  see  what  was  going  on.  There 
I  saw  my  old  friend,  sitting  at  a  table,  on  which  was  stacked  up  a 
pile  of  money,  playing  poker  with  two  men,  who,  from  their  ap- 
pearance, I  immediately  suspected  were  professional  gamblers. 

We  did  not  permit  gambling  on  our  boat,  and  our  captain 
was  violently  opposed  to  it  and  utterly  abhorred  a  professional 
gambler.  I  went  at  once  to  the  hurricane  roof,  where  I  knew  the 
"old  man"  was  on  watch,  and  informed  him  of  what  was  going  on 
below.  He  came  down  in  a  hurry,  and  walking  back  to  the  table, 
said,  "This  game  must  stop  right  here.  You  sports  can't  make  a 
gambling  house  out  of  this  boat.  Mr.  -  — ,"  calling  the  old  fanner 
by  name,  "get  up  from  that  table  and  take  your  money.  These 
men  are  professional  gamblers  and  are  robbing  you.  Now,"  he 
said,  turning  to  the  other  two  men,  "you  fellows  get  your  baggage 
and  get  ready  to  go  ashore." 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  01 

The  gamblers  first  undertook  to  bluff  the  captain,  and  then 
began  to  beg,  but  it  was  all  in  vain;  he  was  inexorable.  It  was  a 
dark  and  stormy  night  and  the  rain  was  pouring  down  in  tor- 
rents, but,  notwithstanding  the  storm,  the  boat  was  landed  along- 
side a  dense  forest  and  the  two  sporting  gentlemen  were  made  to 
walk  a  gang-plank.  We  shoved  off  and  left  them  standing  there 
in  the  dark  woods,  miles  from  any  human  habitation,  and  as  the 
buckets  of  the  wheels  struck  the  water  we  could  hear  their  curses, 
loud  and  bitter,  as  they  swore  eternal  vengeance  against  the  boat 
and  her  officers. 

CHOLERA  ON  THE  RIVER. 

In  the  early  days  of  steamboating,  and  even  as  late  as  the 
'505,  the  cholera  often  became  epidemic  on  the  river  and  caused 
many  deaths.  In  such  cases,  when  a  passenger  died — especially  a 
deck  passenger  who  was  generally  an  immigrant — the  body  of  the 
unfortunate  victim  was  hastily  placed  in  a  rude  wooden  box,  the 
boat  run  alongshore,  where  a  shallow  grave  was  dug  in  which 
the  body  was  hastily  interred.  There  it  remained,  unmarked,  until- 
the  shifting  current  of  the  river  invaded  the  sacred  spot  and  swept 
away  all  that  was  mortal  of  the  unfortunate  stranger,  whose  friends, 
perhaps,  never  knew  his  fate.  There  were  many  such  graves  along 
the  river  in  olden  times,  and  it  was  not  unusual  for  a  coffin  to  be 
seen  protruding  from  the  bank,  where  the  current  had  encroached. 

The  rough  wooden  boxes  used  as  coffins,  were  made  by  the 
boat's  carpenter,  who  worked  day  and  night  in  preparing  them  in 
advance  of  the  death  of  the  victims;  so  that  when  a  death  occurred 
there  might  be  no  delay  in  disposing  of  the  body.  On  one  occa- 
sion a  boat  was  ascending  the  river  with  the  cholera  on  board. 


92  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

Death  was  stalking  the  decks,  and  one  morning,  among  those  who 
had  died  during  the  previous  night,  was  a  man  of  unusual  height. 
No  box  was  found  of  sufficient  length  to  contain  the  body.  What 
was  to  be  done  ?  The  captain,  whose  name  need  not  be  mentioned, 
although  he  has  been  dead  for  more  than  forty  years,  called  for 
an  axe,  and  deliberately  cut  the  man's  legs  off  and  laid  them  be- 
side the  body  in  the  box,  and  thus  the  poor  fellow  was  laid  away 
in  his  hastily  dug  grave. 

In  the  spring  of  1849  tne  steamer  James  Monroe  left  St.  Louis, 
bound  for  the  Missouri  river,  crowded  with  people,  who,  for  the 
most  part,  were  Mormons  en  route  for  Salt  Lake.  On  approaching 
Jefferson  City  the  people  of  that  town — such  was  the  fear  of  the 
epidemic — forbade  the  boat  landing,  and  to  enforce  their  command 
planted  an  old  cannon  called  the  "Sacramento"  on  the  bank  of  the 
river,  and  threatened  to  blow  the  boat  out  of  the  water  if  she  at- 
tempted to  touch  the  wharf.  The  boat  stopped  about  a  mile  below 
town,  and  the  poor  unfortunate  passengers,  in  their  effort  to  es- 
cape from  the  plague-ridden  vessel,  came  up  the  bank  of  the  river, 
where  many  of  their  dead  bodies  were  found.  Finally,  the  com- 
passion of  the  citizens  overcame  their  fear,  the  churches  were  turned 
into  improvised  hospitals,  and  the  best  care  possible  was  given 
those  who  had  survived.  Those  of  the  unfortunate  crew  who  es- 
caped death,  fled  from  the  pestilence,  and  the  ill-fated  boat,  after 
lying  there  for  several  months,  was  taken  back  to  St.  Louis. 

The  most  unfortunate  trip  that  was  ever  made  by  a  steamboat 
up  the  river,  and  the  most  far-reaching  in  its  results,  and  in  the 
sacrifice  of  human  life,  was  that  of  the  St.  Peters.  She  was  a 
single  engine  boat,  built  by  Pierre  Choteau  and  Peter  Sarpy  for  the 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  9,°, 

fur-trade.  She  left  St.  Louis  in  the  spring  of  1837,  bound  for  the 
mountains,  loaded  with  supplies  for  the  different  posts.  Her  deck- 
crew  was  composed  of  negroes,  and  before  she  arrived  at  St.  Jo- 
'seph,  then  called  the  "Blacksnake  Hills,"  the  smallpox  had  broken 
out  among  them,  and,  one,  who  had  died,  was  buried  there.  The 
contagion  immediately  extended  to  other  members  of  the  crew,  and 
the  danger  of  communicating  the  disease  to  the  Indians — who  were 
then  numerous  along  the  river — became  apparent.  Runners  were 
sent  forward  to  give  the  alarm  and  warn  the  Indians  to  keep  away 
from  the  banks;  but  notwithstanding  this  precaution  the  terrible 
contagion  spread,  and  was  communicated  to  every  tribe  east  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains.  The  fatality — as  the  Indians  knew  no 
way  to  treat  the  disease — was  appalling,  and  among  some  tribes 
amounted  to  annihilation.  In  the  case  of  the  Mandans,  a  tribe 
then  seated  near  where  Bismarck,  Dakota,  is  now  located,  a  popu- 
lation of  1,700  was  reduced  to  31.  Among  the  Pawnees,  who 
were  then  on  the  Platte,  the  death-  rate  was  so  great  that  according 
to  the  official  report  made  to  the  government,  they  were  reduced, 
within  a  year,  from  12,500  to  6,244 — one-half  the  tribe  had  died. 
Utter  dismay  pervaded  all  the  tribes,  and  they  fled  from  the  pesti- 
lence, in  every  direction,  leaving  the  bodies  of  their  dead  to  be 
devoured  by  the  wolevs.* 

HIGH  WATER  MARK  REACHED. 

The  year  1858  may  be  taken  as  the  year  in  which  steamboat- 
ing  on  the  Missouri  river  reached  the  summit  of  its  prosperity. 
There  were  then  not  less  than  60  regular  packets  on  the  river,  be- 
sides perhaps  30  or  40  transient  boats,  called  "tramps/'  which  came 

*Reference    has    heretofore    been    made   to   this    epidemic   of   1837. 


94  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

into  the  river  from  other  streams  and  made  one  or  two  trips  during 
the  season.  Packet  lines  were  established  to  Miami,  Kansas  City, 
St.  Joseph,  Omaha,  and  even  to  Sioux  City.  They  carried  the 
United  States  mail  and  express  freight,  and  the  semi-weekly  or 
daily  arrival  of  the  regular  packet  was  looked  forward  to  with  the 
same  degree  of  certainty  as  we  now  look  forward  to  the  arrival  of 
a  railroad  train.  So  numerous  were  the  boats  on  the  lower  river, 
during  this  period,  that  it  was  no  unusual  sight  to  see  as  many  as 
five  or  six  lying  at  a  landing  at  the  same  time,  and  at  no  time 
was  a  boat  out  of  sight  during  the  boating  season,  w7hich  continued 
from  March  till  November.  The  prosperity  which  this  great  traf- 
fic brought  to  the  river  towns  was  phenomenal,  and  the  population 
of  many  of  them  was  greater  fifty  years  ago  than  it  is  today. 

The  usual  life  of  a  steamboat,  barring  accidents,  was  from 
eight  to  ten  years,  and  she  was  expected  to  make  money  from  the 
first  turn  of  her  wheel.  If  she  did  not  she  was  considered  a  failure, 
for  the  depreciation  was  estimated  at  ten  per  cent  the  first  yearf 
and  twenty-five  per  cent  each  year  thereafter.  There  were  many 
boats  in  the  regular  trade  which  paid  back  their  cost  the  first  year, 
and  at  the  end  of  the  second  year,  at  furthest,  they  were  expected 
to  show  a  clean  balance  sheet.  Steamboating  was  a  hazardous  busi- 
ness and  one  attended  with  great  risk,  both  to  life  and  property, 
but  the.  profits,  with  the  rates  of  freight  from  fifty  cents  to  one 
dollar  per  hundred  pounds,  and  passage  from  St.  Louis  to  Kansas 
City  $25,  were  commensurate  with  the  risk.  No  insurance  could 
ever  be  obtained  against  explosions,  and  the  hull  risk  was  from 
12  to  15  cents  per  hundred. 

But  the  business  of  Steamboating,  notwithstanding  all  its  draw- 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  95 

backs,  was  both  profitable  and  pleasant,  and  there  was  a  fascination 
about  it  which  prevented  those  who  had  once  followed  the  river 
ever  becoming  exactly  satisfied  on  shore.  The  continual  change 
of  scenery,  the  panoramic  views  of  forests  and  farm  houses,  the 
meeting  with  interesting  people,  and  above  all  the  social  feature 
of  steamboating,  rendered  the  avocation  a  pleasant  one.  The 
most  pathetic  feature  connected  with  steamboating  on  the  Missouri 
river  was  the  tenacity  with  which  the  old  steamboatman  clung  to 
the  river.  He  seemed  never  to  be  able  to  realize  the  changed  con- 
dition in  the  method  of  transportation  which  came,  but  continued 
the  unequal  contest  with  the  new  method,  hoping  for  the  return 
of  the  good  old  days,  until  the  fortune  he  had  acquired  was  lost. 
There  were  but  few  instances  in  which  they  did  not  die  poor. 

It  cannot  be  expected  that  in  so  brief  a  paper  the  names  of  all 
the  steamboats  that  navigated  the  river  in  its  palmy  days  can  be 
given,  but  among  the  finest  and  most  popular  which  were  on  the 
river  in  1858 — the  banner  year — were  the  following — "Kate  How- 
ard;' "John  D.  Perry;'  "David  Tatum,"  "Silver  Heels,"  "Clara!' 
"Kate  Suinney,"  "B.  W.  Lewis,"  "Platte  Valley;'  "Asa  Wilgus," 
"Alonzo  Child;'  "Australia;'  "F.  X.  Aubrey,"  "Admiral,"  "D.  S. 
Carter"  "Eclipse"  "Emigrant"  "E.  A.  Ogden,"  "Empire  State" 
"Hesperian,"  "Isabella,"  "Jos.  H.  Lucas,"  "New  Lucy,"  "Jenny 
Lewis,"  "Meteor;'  "Minnehaha,"  "Polar  Star"  "Peerless," 
"Spread  Eagle,"  "War  Eagle,"  "South  Western,"  "C.  W.  Som- 
bart,"  "Tropic,"  "Tztnlight,"  "Thomas  E.  Tutt,"  "White  Cloud," 
and  "Edinburg." 

Among  those  which  came  later,  and  which  were  built  for  some 
special  trade,  were  the  "R.  W.  Dugan,"  "E.  H.  Durfce,"  "Phil  E. 


96  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

Chappell,"  "Montana''  "Dakota,"  "A.  L.  Mason."  "State  of  Mis- 
souri" and  "State  of  Kansas"  Some  of  these  ran  as  late  as  1888. 
They  were  the  last  boats  built  for  the  Missouri  river. 

THE  BEGINNING  OF  THE  END. 

But  steamboating  on  the  Missouri  river  is  dead.  Like  the 
cowboy  and  the  prairie  schooner,  the  steamboat  is  a  thing  of  the 
past.  The  whistle  of  the  first  locomotive,  as  it  reverbated  through 
the  Blacksnake  Hills,  on  the  completion  of  the  Hannibal  and  St. 
Joseph  railroad  to  the  Missouri  river  at  St.  Joseph,  in  1859,  sounded 
the  death-knell  of  steamboating  on  that  stream.  It  was  the  be- 
ginning of  the  end.  Steamboating  began  in  1819.  At  the  end  of 
twenty  years  it  had  grown  to  large  proportions  and  continued  to 
grow  for  the  succeeding  twenty  years.  Then  it  began  to  die  and 
in  another  twenty  years  was  dead.  As  the  different  railroads  pene- 
trated the  interior,  touching  the  different  points  on  the  great  water- 
course, its  commerce  began  to  wither  and  die,  and  it  became  evident, 
to  those  who  watched  the  trend  of  events,  that  river  transportation 
could  not  compete  successfully  with  the  cheaper  and  more  rapid 
method. 

Then  came  the  war  of  1861,  causing  the  loss  of  many  boats, 
driving  others  out  of  the  river,  and  from  the  presence  of  the  guerilla 
rendering  navigation  even  more  hazardous  than  it  had  been.  A  few 
boats  remained,  but  even  they,  for  the  most  part,  went  higher 
up  the  river  to  escape  competition  with  the  railroads,  and  ran  be- 
tween Sioux  City  and  Ft.  Benton. 


A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER.  97 

THE  LAST  STAND. 

It  was  during  this  period  (1862)  that  gold  was  discovered  in 
Montana,  and,  as  is  usual  in  such  discoveries,  a  great  rush  of  popu- 
lation began  to  flow  into  that  country.  As  the  only  means  of 
transportation  was  by  way  of  the  Missouri  river,  this  unexpected 
demand  for  transportation  caused  a  wonderful  revival  in  steam- 
boating.  There  were  but  few  regular  boats  on  the  Missouri,  at 
that  time,  but  others  began  to  crowd  in  from  every  stream  west 
of  the  Alleghenies — sidewheelers,  sternwheelers,  and  old  tubs.  The 
voyage  to  Fort  Benton,  the  nearest  point  to  the  mines,  was  2,200 
miles,  and  it  was  beset  with  danger,  both  in  the  navigation  and  from 
the  Indians. 

This  trade,  which  was  of  short  duration,  proved  to  be  ex- 
ceedingly profitable,  as  the  rates  demanded  and  paid  were  exorbi- 
tant. The  usual  rate  on  freight  was  from  ten  to  fifteen  cents  per 
pound,  and  a  first  class  passage  to  Fort  Benton  cost  $300.  Enor- 
mous profits  were  made  by  some  of  the  boats.  On  one  trip  the 
"St.  John"  cleared  $17,000,  the  "Laconia"  $16,000  and  the  "Oc- 
tavia"  $40,000.  The  "W.  J.  Lewis,"  a  new  boat,  built  in  1865, 
went  to  Fort  Benton  in  1866,  and  when  she  returned  to  St.  Louis, 
after  an  absence  of  60  days,  had  cleared  her  cost,  which  was  $60,- 
ooo.  The  "Peter  Eden,"  an  old  tub,  not  worth  over  $15,000,  but 
a  good  carrier,  made  a  profit  of  $80,000  on  one  trip.* 

But  this  rich  harvest  only  continued  ten  years,  for  like  a 
Nemesis  the  railroad  pursued  the  steamboat.  In  1872  the  Northern 


*The  writer  has  in  his  possession  a  list  of  more  than  600  steamboats 
that  navigated  the  Missouri  river.  It  is  not  complete,  as  it  probably  does 
not  contain  half  the  names,  but  it  is  perhaps  the  most  complete  list  that 
has  been  preserved. 


98  A  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSOURI  RIVER. 

Pacific  railroad  reached  Bismarck,  and  for  a  second  time  the  steam- 
boat was  forced  to  surrender  to  its  invincible  enemy.  It  was  the 
last  stand  of  the  steamboat,  on  the  Missouri  river,  in  its  battle  with 
the  railroad. 

There  is  not  today  a  single  steamboat  engaged  in  navigating 
the  Missouri  river.  All  are  gone.  The  glory  of  the  past  is  gone. 
The  evolution  is  complete.  The  Indian  canoe,  the  perogue,  the 
batteam,  the  keelboat,  the  mackinaw  boat,  the  steamboat,  have  all 
passed  away,  and  there  now  remains,  on  what  was  once  the  great 
commercial  thoroughfare  of  the  West,  only  the  original  navigator 
— the  little  blue-winged  teal  duck.  The  recollection  of  steamboating 
on  the  Missouri  river,  is,  to  the  old  steamboatman,  but  a  pleasant 
dream  of  the  past. 


